Why people travel via London

[thewolf]

I've been to Norfolk a couple of times recently in order to do some fieldwork for my dissertation.

If I bought a walk up fare, it would be slightly cheaper (only by a few pounds) for a Not London ticket, but both of those were more than £55 so I did it with advances.

If I was to go with XC from New St to Ely, the earliest train I could get an advance fare on was the 0922, getting to Ely some time around 12 (leaving a further change, and further ticket to get to Norwich) and it was priced around £18 (With a railcard). With the change at Ely, I wouldn't have got to where I was headed til around 3 in the afternoon.

It would've cost me close to £50 with the ticket from Ely onwards - probably little or no saving over buying an off-peak return.

However, going via London:

I caught the 0550 Virgin service from New St to Euston, which cost me about £8 and then the 0800 from Liverpool Street to Norwich, which was a fiver. I was in Norwich by the time I'd have been at Leicester with XC.

Coming back again it was a fiver to Liverpool Street and then another fiver from Euston to New Street.

I think it took about an hour longer, but was much cheaper (the whole journey only set me back £24.10), was much more comfortable and allowed me to travel much earlier and get there at a reasonable time.

 

[route:oxford]

Back in the day, would have used XC for the direct train, but now the only place you can get too is Plymouth or change at Birmingham the advantage has gone. Edinburgh - Oxford for example is for me so much easier via London.

Do you really find that?

It was better when Virgin ran services from Oxford to Edinburgh via the WCML, but even now 5h22 with a same platform change at Wolverhampton is the norm.

By comparison, normal service time from Edinburgh to London is 4h25m and London to Oxford 1h01m So not much in it...

But then you have the circle line, so then you load wasted time, then take the first fast Bristol train to Reading and find yourself on a taking a stopper or a connecting XC Voyager that you were probably trying to avoid in the first place.