Swindon to Oxford

[LlanishenBull]

I travelled from Cardiff to Leamington and back on Saturday.

Several splits inc Swindon to Oxford on a not via Reading fare..

I was changing at Swindon to catch the next train stopping at Didcot but I could see that was late, so late I'd miss my connection at Didcot to Oxford and subsequently the XC from Oxford to Leamington.

I wandered up the train before we got to Swindon to try and find the guard; only found a train manager who couldn't advise me either way whether due to late connections I could travel via Reading (where I'd catch the same XC train.

Despite the lack of clarity i stayed on, changed at Reading, the XC train was very busy so no chance of being checked anyway.

Would I have got away with it or been expectedto pay an excess? I would have been honest and up front with any guard.

Journey home was fine, connections timely, so I travelled on the correct services.

 

[Watershed]

Unless the anticipated delay arriving into Leamington was 61+ mins if you missed the connection, you wouldn't have a clear right to travel via Reading.

In a sane world the TOCs would be more than happy for you to do so. in order to minimise their Delay Repay liability, but sadly that's not the world we live in. You will sometimes come across a minority of staff that are only too happy to penalise you for trying to do the right thing.

The 'good' news is that there is no penalty for obtaining a change of route excess onboard the train, so you would simply have had to pay the relevant difference in fare. However there are also some staff who might not follow the correct procedures and who would try to wrongly charge you for a new ticket, or who would miscalculate the difference.

Overall it's not a very satisfactory situation, and you were lucky not to have a ticket check on the XC service.

 

[father_jack]

Unless the anticipated delay arriving into Leamington was 61+ mins if you missed the connection, you wouldn't have a clear right to travel via Reading.

In a sane world the TOCs would be more than happy for you to do so. in order to minimise their Delay Repay liability, but sadly that's not the world we live in. You will sometimes come across a minority of staff that are only too happy to penalise you for trying to do the right thing.

The 'good' news is that there is no penalty for obtaining a change of route excess onboard the train, so you would simply have had to pay the relevant difference in fare. However there are also some staff who might not follow the correct procedures and who would try to wrongly charge you for a new ticket, or who would miscalculate the difference.

Overall it's not a very satisfactory situation, and you were lucky not to have a ticket check on the XC service.

XC still aren't "scanning" so some TMs don't appear to be checking at all !!!

 

[LlanishenBull]

Unless the anticipated delay arriving into Leamington was 61+ mins if you missed the connection, you wouldn't have a clear right to travel via Reading.

In a sane world the TOCs would be more than happy for you to do so. in order to minimise their Delay Repay liability, but sadly that's not the world we live in. You will sometimes come across a minority of staff that are only too happy to penalise you for trying to do the right thing.

The 'good' news is that there is no penalty for obtaining a change of route excess onboard the train, so you would simply have had to pay the relevant difference in fare. However there are also some staff who might not follow the correct procedures and who would try to wrongly charge you for a new ticket, or who would miscalculate the difference.

Overall it's not a very satisfactory situation, and you were lucky not to have a ticket check on the XC service.

Thanks. That was what I would have expected / feared.

If I stayed on my paid for route I'd have been 60 minutes late (assuming the next XC was on time). Just checked, it was a few minutes late into Leamington, so I would have been about 65 mins later than scheduled, but my time was more important than a relatively small delay repay.

My delay would have been caused by a late GWR service not XC, hence I wanted to speak to the guard on my initial GWR train.