Routing for Cromford to Glossop

[james-martin]

Hello everyone,

I am just looking in to travel options and costs for a journey for my parents. They wish to travel from Cromford to Glossop. Apparently, there are no return fares (or any tickets other than split ticketing) available according to NRE.

Having looked at the journey plan I see that the journey recommends changing at Derby, Sheffield, and Manchester (as I would have expected) with a journey time of just over 3 hours. To me the lack of fares suggests a routing problem.

Forcing routing via Stoke-on-Trent sensible fares appear but the journey is about half an hour longer! So, does anyone have experience that says that travelling via Sheffield is a perfectly reasonable route? I'd say time alone says it is reasonable but I've seen routing rulings before that are contrary to common sense from a TOC before and even involving Passenger Focus yielded no benefit in the end.

Incidentally, I’ve seen other routing failure on journeys from Sheffield to Cambridge earlier in the year. Are these routing failures becoming more common and does anyone know why?

Experience and advice on this greatly appreciated!

Cheers,

James.

 

[button_boxer]

That's a rather awkward journey to do by train as both ends are the end of a branch facing the "wrong way". You may be quicker by bus, TransportDirect thinks you can do it in two legs of about an hour each, changing in Buxton.

 

[brompton rail]

Hello everyone,

I am just looking in to travel options and costs for a journey for my parents. They wish to travel from Cromford to Glossop. Apparently, there are no return fares (or any tickets other than split ticketing) available according to NRE.

Having looked at the journey plan I see that the journey recommends changing at Derby, Sheffield, and Manchester (as I would have expected) with a journey time of just over 3 hours. To me the lack of fares suggests a routing problem.

Forcing routing via Stoke-on-Trent sensible fares appear but the journey is about half an hour longer! So, does anyone have experience that says that travelling via Sheffield is a perfectly reasonable route? I'd say time alone says it is reasonable but I've seen routing rulings before that are contrary to common sense from a TOC before and even involving Passenger Focus yielded no benefit in the end.

Incidentally, I’ve seen other routing failure on journeys from Sheffield to Cambridge earlier in the year. Are these routing failures becoming more common and does anyone know why?

Experience and advice on this greatly appreciated!

Cheers,

James.

A Derbyshire Wayfarer ticket would allow train travel Cromford to Derby, Derby to Sheffield, Sheffield to New Mills Central. A walk (short -400m- but steepish uphill) from New Mills Central station to the bus station allows a connection with the hourly (Buxton) - New Mills - Glossop bus. Not a quick journey, but it does avoid the frequently delayed Trans Peak bus from Cromford to Buxton. The bus, however, is the quickest by far.

The £33 single train fare is from Belper to Glossop, so a single from Cromford doesn't add much to this fare! Mind you a Wayfarer is £12!

 

[richardderby]

train service to Matlock, and buy Matlock plusbus for £6 onboard. (you would need to book from whatstandwell to get plusbus..)

http://www.plusbus.info/matlock

the trains connect with the hourly transpeak to Buxton at Matlock station, change Buxton for the hourly 61 to Glossop, all valid with the plusbus ticket..
http://www.derbysbus.info/times/timetables/TPKP-140316a.pdf

http://www.derbysbus.info/times/timetables/061P-131124a.pdf

Derbyshire council are pretty good with joined up public transport...

 

[Chapeltom]

Cheaper than the Wayfarer...

Cromford to Matlock return by train. £2.40 for a full adult Off Peak Day Return.
Buy a PeakPlus ticket for bus onward. Will be valid on TransPeak to Buxton, then the Buxton to Glossop bus. Cost is £7.50.

 

[greatkingrat]

According to the Routeing Guide permitted routes are

Cromford - Derby - Sheffield - Romiley - Guide Bridge - Glossop
and
Cromford - Derby - Stoke - Stockport - Manchester - Guide Bridge - Glossop

but not
Cromford - Derby - Sheffield - Stockport - Manchester - Guide Bridge - Glossop
even though it is the quickest route

In practice I would expect the ticket to be accepted though.

 

[bb21]

I do think one would be crazy to do this journey by train, unless during non-operational hours for the bus.

 

[Starmill]

Would be rather easier if the line were still open, eh?

 

[james-martin]

Thanks everyone for your replies! Some great ideas for a cost saving I’m sure these will be of great help!

I've dug in to this a bit more and I agree with you greatkingrat I'm sure it would be accepted. It's just profoundly irritating when I know that a fare has to exist between each origin and destination in the country and yet someone who did not know that fact would be faced with railway IT systems saying you must buy two tickets. It seems that there is not even a quality assessment of the outputs of the system checking that any journey planned gives results that show the fare that does not involve two tickets!

Having tried a couple of retail sites we have eastmidlandstrains.co.uk reporting “No tickets are available, please refine your search”. However, eastcoast.co.uk successfully showed me the quickest route and allows a through ticket purchase. I wonder if they have thrown out recent routing guide updates because they have had too many issues (I reported my Sheffield to Cambridge via Not London issues to them)?

In my further digging this morning I found some very interesting things suggesting that some unfortunate soul is majorly rewriting the routing guide?! See http://www.atoc.org/about-atoc/rail-settlement-plan/routeing-guide/ Where at the time of writing there are multiple screens of what seem to be weekly changes. Does anyone know the background for this?

I’ve dug out my old PDFs of the routing guide and found that it certainly was reasonable to take the fastest route. This allowed PS+MR map PS allowed the Romiley route as listed, however with the additional map this no doubt allowed the journey planning systems to allow a change at Manchester as otherwise there would be no purpose in adding MR.

The new combination of NB+HO excludes travel between Stockport and Manchester (map HO) which I’m guessing is not intentional at least for this journey.

This brings me on to the fact that the routing guide no longer has a PDF of maps, does anyone know if one does exist as I think the web presentation is a lot less clear and of course is not portable either!

Cheers,

James.

P.S. Rail is sometimes preferable if you have luggage like my parents will 
Though if luggage is fie on the bus routes they might still opt for this and have a coffee in Buxton for the half hour connection shown on transportdirect.

 

[Hyphen]

The new combination of NB+HO excludes travel between Stockport and Manchester (map HO) which I’m guessing is not intentional at least for this journey.

Funnily enough, from your link - the Routeing Guide as updated yesterday:

To add routes for a journey Cromford to Glossop Map sequences added
DERBY GROUP (G09) and Guide Bridge (GUI) - added sequence 'NB+DW'
NOTTINGHAM GROUP (G43) and Guide Bridge (GUI) - added sequence 'NB+DW'
Map Sequences deleted
DERBY GROUP (G09) and Guide Bridge (GUI) - removed sequence 'NB+HO'
NOTTINGHAM GROUP (G43) and Guide Bridge (GUI) - removed sequence 'NB+HO'

 

[greatkingrat]

(waves to the ATOC man)

 

[james-martin]

thanks to ATOC man, very happy! Dare I raise the bemusing issues I had for Loughborough to Norwich many years back?