Through train from University to Coventry?

[Amy Worrall]

A few weeks ago I was heading back from University station in Birmingham, to Canley in Coventry. The websites all suggested changing at New Street. I got on a train that supposedly terminated at New Street, but when it got there it became a train to Coventry, and after a five or ten minute wait it set off again, taking me directly to Canley.

Is this common, or did I just stumble upon a quirk of the timetable? If it is common, why don't they advertise it as a through train?

Amy

 

[Tomnick]

Without knowing which pair of services were involved, I'd guess that it's either a quirk of the unit diagramming (and occurs on a daily basis) or that something had gone wrong and Control were busy shuffling units around (so was a one-off). Advertising it as a through service would remove some of the flexibility when they are trying to recover the service after an earlier problem, so it's probably not worth it if it's not part of the standard pattern through the day.