Unable to buy AP CH&ATW ONLY advances on WebTIS

[Merseysider]

Looking at advances from Chester to London on the TPE website (several dates in June) and an option comes up on 'show slower routes': "CH & ATW ONLY". However, ticking this box doesn't seem to have any effect on the itineraries returned and in any case no Chiltern & Arriva Trains Wales Only advance fares are offered.

I've tried the LM website too, just in case it's a bug on the TPE website. I've tried avoid MKC, via Banbury, destination MYB but nothing seems to work. Even with the box ticked, I'm still offered VT, LM or XC for one or more legs.

Any suggestions?

 

[Starmill]

Hmm I knew there were new CH &CONNECTIONS Advances to and from London, but I didn't know AP CH & ATW ONLY was one! I guess we are always surprised :P Some other weird stuff has also been popping up that I've never seen before, like AP ATW&TPE ONLY and AP ATW LM + CONN (as distinct from AP ATW & LM ONLY).

My leading hypothesis by the way is that WebTIS is a load of crap. Ticking those boxes on the left has absolutely no effect if it can't immediately find the trains you want to use. This, and the examples I gave before (e.g. the TPE and ATW one only works via Manchester, but its faster to go via Warrington so you can't always buy them) are symptomatic of TOCs adding new flows or doing bilateral deals for 'slower' routes than one might expect and not bothering to check if they show as permitted routes or sensible journey itineraries in the booking engines.

Frankly until we see an LM or CH (+somebody! Come on guys, a VIA HIGH WYCOMBE would do it!) ticket between London Terminals and Manchester Stations, they are all wasting their time

 

[Starmill]

An update: I've got it to generate the itinerary this ticket is presumably intended for use along (People from ATW and Chiltern, if this isn't what you intended please God get in touch, we are acting somewhat blind here ) but for some reason I cannot get it to offer any tickets. Is this not a permitted route according to the electronic routeing data for Chester to London? Is it in the real RG?



Ultimately if people have to try this hard to buy a product that's been put on sale, nobody will bother.

 

[Starmill]

A further update, I have managed to cajole it into selling walk-up tickets from Chester to London Terminals via Wrexham, Birmingham and High Wycombe. Use a via point of High Wycombe and filter by trains calling at Wrexham General.

 

[Starmill]

Give up. Someone in a ticket office have a go

 

[gray1404]

Good to see they are offering affordable fares on the Advance range from £7.25 and up with a railcard and £11 without. It will be interesting to see what availability on these advances is like. Its a shame they didn't create a ATW & CH walk-up too.

I am not sure why each ticket is listed twice on the fare list though. i.e. on Virgin WC when you enter the journey details and then click to display slower routes and it brings up the fare list. I notice on BRfares each of the advance tiers is listed twice. However, having tried different dates in June too when I click on check for trains, it is not listing any on Virgin either.

 

[Starmill]

Good to see they are offering affordable fares on the Advance range from £7.25 and up with a railcard and £11 without. It will be interesting to see what availability on these advances is like. Its a shame they didn't create a ATW & CH walk-up too.

Given we haven't worked out how they're issued yet, zero

In seriousness, the availability will probably just be the same as it is for Chiltern's current trains, minus whatever is not available on the LM train you use.

If BRFares is not out of date and restriction code CA is in used with these, maybe that's why there are issues? Not valid on ATW!

 

[Merseysider]

Thanks for doing some digging Starmill, I didn't think to check the restriction code myself

Seems like somebody was in a rush when these fares were created!

...AP ATW&TPE ONLY and AP ATW LM + CONN (as distinct from AP ATW & LM ONLY).

Got any examples of these exotic tickets? I'm struggling to imagine what ATW&TPE Only could be used for, unless it's Leeds to Wales or something like that?

Edit: Well I've just found an ATW FGW NT & TPE Advance for Leeds to Cardiff!

 

[Paul Kelly]

Chiltern have added a whole raft of new ticket types (C3X, C3Y, C6Z etc.) for these new advances - I wonder could it be that the booking engines haven't had these ticket types specifically enabled yet? We saw that problem before where FGW's WebTIS wasn't enabled for a specific advance tier and simply never sold it, until it was deduced and pointed out on this forum.

 

[gray1404]

Given we haven't worked out how they're issued yet, zero

In seriousness, the availability will probably just be the same as it is for Chiltern's current trains, minus whatever is not available on the LM train you use.

If BRFares is not out of date and restriction code CA is in used with these, maybe that's why there are issues? Not valid on ATW!

These Chester-London CH and ATW Advance tickets are not valid on LM are they?

 

[Starmill]

Which makes them a bit useless really given you have to rely on the ATW trains for Birmingham - Chester.

 

[gray1404]

I thought they ran an hourly service between Chester and Birmingham (ATW)? Its a simialr siutaiton on the London Midland from Crewe to Euston really.

 

[Starmill]

Well, kinda if you change...


(Chester to Birmingham)

Plus 2 through trains via Stafford. If you can make those work in the itinerary though is doubtful!

http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/P40255/2015/06/02/advanced
http://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/train/P40068/2015/06/02/advanced

 

[gray1404]

It seems like a simple logig on this ticket. Chester to Birminghm New Street on ATW. Walk across to Moor Street and the rest of the journey to London with CH. Simple in theory surely (if that hard in reality?)

 

[Starmill]

It seems like a simple logig on this ticket. Chester to Birminghm New Street on ATW. Walk across to Moor Street and the rest of the journey to London with CH. Simple in theory surely (if that hard in reality?)

As you can see from the screenshot, for most of the day you are also required to change at Shrewsbury.

Also, because Birmingham to Chester is always quicker via Stafford than it is via Wrexham, you must choose Wrexham as a via point - you can't even use Shrewsbury because it can be quicker to do Chester to Shrewsbury on VT and then Crewe > Shrewsbury > Birmingham. But what happens if you choose Wrexham as a via point? You are given a Virgin Trains service from Wolverhampton to London, because that's obviously a lot quicker than going to Marylebone. So the solution is to filter by via High Wycombe and trains which call at Wrexham General, the two ATW trains I pointed out above notwithstanding. If you call that 'simple logic' I think most people would perhaps not agree!

The last thing to remember is you might be able to change at Smethiwck Galton Bridge too, and the whole thing becomes a bit of a mess. If there were lots of direct trains from Chester to Birmingham it might make more sense. There are only 7, one of which is at 0422 in the morning and another arrives after the last Chiltern service to London has left.

 

[Welshman]

ATW used to advertise this way to London Marylebone using their Club55 Tickets with the appropriate add-on.

From North Wales, I seem to remember it worked-out about £10 cheaper than an off-peak ticket with Virgin via Crewe, but, as you say, with difficult connections and the faff of changing at Smethwick Galton Bridge, it just wasn't worth it!

 

[DaiGog]

Tickets are coming up as 'Not valid for TOC ATW' in Fujitsu Journey Planner. This would suggest something technical has not been done to enable these ticket types to show as valid on ATW - probably system limitations in the number of ticket types available per TOC.

 

[Paul Kelly]

Tickets are coming up as 'Not valid for TOC ATW' in Fujitsu Journey Planner.

Is that for one of the "old" Chiltern advance ticket types that begin with '2' (i.e. 2CC, 2DC, 2EC, 2FC, 2GC, 2HC, 2JC, 2KC)? It looks to me like these are going to stay Chiltern Only (despite what the route code says) and that it's a mistake that Chiltern have put these in for the Chester to London flow.

I'm more interested in if any journey planners are showing the new Chiltern & Connections advance ticket types (i.e. C1X, C2X, C3X, C3Y, C4X, C4Y, C5X, C5Y, C6Z, C6Y, C7Z, C8Z)? According to the fares data, some of these seem to be valid on any TOC, which looks to be a bit of a mistake, and as a result I suspect most journey planners are simply not showing them. But I'm not sure; this is just a guess.

 

[gray1404]

Its the same situation though as a cheap LM&SN ticket I booked down South earlier this month. I had lot of trouble getting it to load too until I worked out the via points. And yes, your being overtaken by other services all the way plus a long connection and a just missed connection on another leg. But the journey is possible if you stick to the 2 TOCs only printed on the ticket AND avoid London. Someone on here said to me, at that price what do you expect? I guess the same is true here. At £11/£7.25 (railcard) it is a bargin.

That is of course, once it the issues have been fixed and it is actually possible to book the fare.

 

[kieron]

Until that happens, remember that the cheapish London-Wrexham General "via High Wycombe" tickets are valid via Chester.

 

[gray1404]

There is clearly an issue in the system here that needs correcting. I think its worth making CN customer relations aware of the problem and press them to fix it. Or even better if you could be put in touch with the pricing Manager at CN (Contact with ATW too if this would help).

In the mean time, might be cheaper if the VT Advances have sold out) to do a ticket to Crewe and then a LM advance on split tickets.

 

[DaiGog]

Is that for one of the "old" Chiltern advance ticket types that begin with '2' (i.e. 2CC, 2DC, 2EC, 2FC, 2GC, 2HC, 2JC, 2KC)? It looks to me like these are going to stay Chiltern Only (despite what the route code says) and that it's a mistake that Chiltern have put these in for the Chester to London flow.

I'm more interested in if any journey planners are showing the new Chiltern & Connections advance ticket types (i.e. C1X, C2X, C3X, C3Y, C4X, C4Y, C5X, C5Y, C6Z, C6Y, C7Z, C8Z)? According to the fares data, some of these seem to be valid on any TOC, which looks to be a bit of a mistake, and as a result I suspect most journey planners are simply not showing them. But I'm not sure; this is just a guess.

Both sets of ticket types are priced on the flow. C1X, C3X etc are showing as valid for the journey, i.e. satisfying the condition of travel with the relevant TOCs, but there seems to be no availability. 2CC, 2DC etc are coming up as not valid for travel with ATW. Could it be that they have simply not been launched yet?

 

[CyrusWuff]

Having spoken to someone in the know, the tickets in question have been input correctly, but an error has crept in somewhere so the "old" fares are showing as only being valid on Chiltern and the "new" fares are valid on everything except Chiltern! A larger hammer is being applied so it should be rectified shortly.

 

[Merseysider]

Having spoken to someone in the know, the tickets in question have been input correctly, but an error has crept in somewhere so the "old" fares are showing as only being valid on Chiltern and the "new" fares are valid on everything except Chiltern! A larger hammer is being applied so it should be rectified shortly.

That's great news. Nice work for following it up

Will keep an eye out for their appearance

 

[ji459]

The option of "CH & ATW ONLY" for London to Chester appears to have disappeared. There are though options of "CH &CON VIA SHR" (on the TPE website) or "Only valid on booked Chiltern Railways services and required connecting services via Shrewsbury" (on the Chiltern website) for other stations in the South East to Chester and to other stations in the North West and Wales, e.g. Harlow Town to Aberystwyth, Brighton to Glan Conwy and Claygate to Bache.

As before though, choosing that option doesn't affect the itineraries returned or show the Chiltern only advance fares. I asked Chiltern about Ashford International to Bangor and they said brfares.com was wrong to show a Chiltern only advance...

 

[hassaanhc]

The other day I was looking for Marylebone to Wolverhampton Advance tickets, which would be "Chiltern & Connections", but there were no Advance fares shown in the booking engine list.

However. Just now I've had SUCCESS

I thought about trying from my local station to Wolverhampton. If you put in Southall to Wolverhampton (via Solihull) on the Chiltern MixingDeck, you are given "Chiltern & Connections" tickets Availability is limited though.

 

[Starmill]

I would take extra care to ensure you are not reserved on a CrossCountry train to Wolverhampton, not from Birmingham where possible and certainly not from Banbury, as this is likely to push the price up somewhat! Choosing trains which call at Smethwick Rolfe Street may help here.

 

[hassaanhc]

I would take extra care to ensure you are not reserved on a CrossCountry train to Wolverhampton, not from Birmingham where possible and certainly not from Banbury, as this is likely to push the price up somewhat! Choosing trains which call at Smethwick Rolfe Street may help here.

Well spotted . The low availability shown in the previous post was indeed caused by XC services being included. So I added a station called at by the LM stoppers (in this case Tipton) and the availability has gone up massively! (The top one greyed out in the screenshot uses HC from Southall instead of FGW)

 

[gray1404]

Does anyone have an update on these AP CH&ATW Advances from Chester to London? do they actually exist? I am really wanted to buy one. Or is a Wrexham to London (and use it via Chester - i.e. start there) the best bet?

If so, do those Advance fares from Wrexham actually exist or is the Super Off Peak the best option?

I am really hoping to be able to get a Chester-London CH and AW advance...but heres hoping.....

 

[Paul Kelly]

Looks like there some Chiltern & ATW walk-up fares coming in with NFM22 on 6th September - maybe they have given up on the advances? See attached screenshot showing a Super Off-Peak single for £48.90 - interestingly Chiltern are showing it as valid on London Midland even though the route description (shown when hovering over the fare in WebTIS) would suggest not...