Morning restrictions from Norwich

[Stargull]

Hi all

Hoping for some urgent advice. I have a Norwich to Oxford Parkway advance single for tomorrow morning, valid ‘on specified trains & connections only’. The ticket itself notes the 11.07 Marylebone to Parkway service, which is fine.

The itinerary supplied by the booking site (Trainsplit) shows a route via Ely and into Kings Cross, but this is not mentioned on the ticket. My question is whether I can use a more direct service into Liverpool Street, which would buy me a small lie-in!

Thanks in advance.

 

[Watershed]

Hi all

Hoping for some urgent advice. I have a Norwich to Oxford Parkway advance single for tomorrow morning, valid ‘on specified trains & connections only’. The ticket itself notes the 11.07 Marylebone to Parkway service, which is fine.

The itinerary supplied by the booking site (Trainsplit) shows a route via Ely and into Kings Cross, but this is not mentioned on the ticket. My question is whether I can use a more direct service into Liverpool Street, which would buy me a small lie-in!

Thanks in advance.

In theory you are only supposed to use the trains included in your itinerary. Even if these are not shown on your ticket.

In practice, if you have an ordinary paper ticket which just shows a reserved service from London to Oxford, how are you supposed to know which train you were booked to take from Norwich, if you don't have the booking in front of you (or if someone else booked it for you)...

In other words, I don't see that there could be any penalty for taking a different train, so long as this is not excluded by the route etc. of your ticket.

 

[CyrusWuff]

In other words, I don't see that there could be any penalty for taking a different train, so long as this is not excluded by the route etc. of your ticket.

That would be fine but for the fact that Norwich to Liverpool Street services are former InterCity ones, with Advances available, so reservations are very much required.

You'd be more likely to be permitted to travel on a different Chiltern service between Marylebone and Oxford Parkway, as that forms the "& connections" leg of the journey, but that's not guaranteed given they also do Advances.

 

[Watershed]

That would be fine but for the fact that Norwich to Liverpool Street services are former InterCity ones, with Advances available, so reservations are very much required.

You'd be more likely to be permitted to travel on a different Chiltern service between Marylebone and Oxford Parkway, as that forms the "& connections" leg of the journey, but that's not guaranteed given they also do Advances.

Reservations are indeed mandatory. But only from a booking engine's perspective.

If you held OP's ticket, there is no indication you cannot take the Norwich-Liverpool Street service.

To be clear, the OP should take the services they are booked on, even if they do not have a reservation. It is just that the ticket makes this difficult to enforce.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Does the (advance) ticket itself not state "BOOKD TRAIN ONLY" which might suggest reservations/counted places are required?

 

[JonathanH]

This has come up a number of times on here now - essentially the passenger gets an advance fare at a price they are happy to accept going from Norwich to London and onwards via Ely / Kings Cross, opts to buy that ticket and then wonders whether they can use the route via Ipswich.

As the OP points out, going via Cambridge is slower than going into Liverpool Street, considerably so in fact so some sort of intervention (specifying via Ely for example) will have been needed to buy the ticket. The departure times needed to connect into the 1107 from Marylebone are 0729 via Ely and 0803 via Ipswich.

You might imagine that Greater Anglia's pricing / enforcement teams are onto this by now (if they need to be) and actually have a policy for what happens on a Norwich to London train if one of these tickets is presented because the lack of a reservation will almost always mean that the Ely route has specifically been chosen when the ticket was purchased (other than when engineering work applies).

 

[Stargull]

Thanks all - most helpful. I was expecting ‘via Ely’ on the ticket and its absence raised hope.