I'm traveling on a "AWC & connections" advance single from Kirkconnel (between Kilmarnock & Dumfries) to Nottingham tomorrow.
I have now realised that my "published" itinerary has a short (but obviously over the minimum) connection at Crewe onto 1208 EMR to Derby (then XC to Nottingham), with the next Derby via Uttoxeter bound train not until 1408.
If my AWC train is late and the Crewe EMR connection missed, would my ticket be valid via Tamworth (LNWR & XC)? This would result in my arrival into Nottingham around 30 minutes late rather than 2 hours.
As an aside, the 2 hour gap in the middle of the day is a bit of an oddity as the Crewe Derby service is otherwise hourly as far as I can tell.
Yes, rerouting via Tamworth would be fine.
Firstly, if you miss a connection en-route, you can take the next available service(s) which comply with your ticket's route or TOC restrictions. Your ticket is routed "Avanti & connections" so there is no restriction on which operators you may use for the connecting legs of your journey. Hence if you miss the connection onto the EMR service at Crewe and the next itinerary to get to Nottingham is via Tamworth, that's how you should travel.
Furthermore, under Article 16(b) of the Rail Passengers' Rights and Obligations Regulation (PRO -
EU Regulation 1371/2007 - which has been retained in domestic law post-Brexit), if a delay in arrival of more than 60 minutes is expected, you are entitled to be rerouted free of charge at the earliest opportunity. That means that if your ticket has restrictions which would ordinarily prevent you from taking the next available itinerary to your destination, these restrictions should be disapplied (which may mean ticket acceptance being arranged, for example).
The latter doesn't really come into it in this case as your ticket is valid on any appropriate connecting services anyway, but should staff (wrongly) try and charge you extra for rerouting via Tamworth, it provides you with a clear cut entitlement to reclaim this.
Just for information, your train to Crewe is scheduled to be formed of a double Voyager. The orientation of the sets can be rather skew-whiff as there are numerous opportunities for them to get turned around, but the most common one appears to be (from front to back) EDCBA-LKJHG.
Your train is scheduled to arrive into Crewe platform 5, therefore ideally you want to be situated in coach B to be closest to the platform for your Nottingham service (platform 2). It would only be a walk of around 50 yards or so then.
The performance of your service to Crewe is
somewhat mixed - it only arrives within 5 minutes of its scheduled time around 58% of the time. If you're running late by Preston it's unlikely you'll catch up much more time.
As for the reason why there's a gap in the Nottingham services, it's because EMR are still operating a reduced timetable. This means they have taken out one of the five units used to operate the Crewe-Newark service - so there is a gap in the service every fifth hour.
