First Class From Bristol Temple Meads To Liverpool

Hi folks
Next week i'm looking to go to Liverpool for a job interview next Thursday and travelling the afternoon on the Wednesday and coming home on Friday.
As a solo traveller I feel more comfortable in first class particularly over the Christmas season.
I want to go First Class on Virgin to Liverpool because I like their service and how much more you get for your first class fare.
Im going from Temple Meads and know I have to change trains to get to Lime Street anyway....
Where should I do this from? Birmingham? Crewe?
When I tried getting an idea of costs on the Virgin website it mentions travelling with Crossrail and West Midlands??? Im getting confused and hoping you guys can offer some advice!
Cheers
Lucy

The ‘normal’ way to get between Bristol and Liverpool would be to use a Crosscountry Service to Birmingham and then a West Midlands Trains Service to Liverpool.
Virgin Trains would just be the retailer in this case. It can be confusing. It’s best to pretend that the virgin trains you book your ticket with and the virgin trains that run trains are completely different companies.
Most (If not all) train companies also act as retailers but they can sell tickets for other operators. As you can see with your journey here it’s perfectly normal to book a journey with a retailer and not be booked onto any of their trains. As such you wouldn’t get the first class offerings of their trains.

There may be a way to use a virgin service for part of your journey but the journey opportunities show the simplest and fastest routes so the chances are by forcing yourself onto a virgin Service your journey might be longer and/or become more complicated by including more changes.

You can change once at Stafford if you wish to use Virgin Trains. Go to raileasy.trainsplit.com and change the transport operators to Virgin Trains and CrossCountry only. Note that this may exclude some of the the fastest journey opportunities. Also note that only a small portion of your journey is on Virgin Trains. You could change more times, and have a longer journey, to spend more time on Virgin Trains.

First Class tickets on this route can be very costly.

So in a little more detail, it is possible to use a Virgin Service for part of your journey, but it would be less than an hour. You may not be offered the full first class service for this as they generally have a cut off point.
Starmill explains more above so I won’t repeat that info.

If I was making this journey on Cross Country and West Midlands Trains I would travel standard all the way. That is because the first class section on WMT between Birmingham and Liverpool is hardly anything different to standard. There is no food or drinks offered either. So, if I really wanted to go first class for the Cross County part of the journey I might look at getting two separate advance tickets: Bristol - Birmingham, Birmingham - Liverpool. I certainly wouldn't extend my journey just to use Virgin.

I wonder if the OP thinks that Virgin still operate the CrossCountry franchise?

Hadders said:

I wonder if the OP thinks that Virgin still operate the CrossCountry franchise?

Click to expand...

As I'm sure you know XC dont serve Lime St anymore so I think the OP may be aware if they're hinting at changing at Birmingham or Crewe to get to Lime St...

Luceebow said:

Hi folks
Next week i'm looking to go to Liverpool for a job interview next Thursday and travelling the afternoon on the Wednesday and coming home on Friday.
As a solo traveller I feel more comfortable in first class particularly over the Christmas season.
I want to go First Class on Virgin to Liverpool because I like their service and how much more you get for your first class fare.
Im going from Temple Meads and know I have to change trains to get to Lime Street anyway....
Where should I do this from? Birmingham? Crewe?
When I tried getting an idea of costs on the Virgin website it mentions travelling with Crossrail and West Midlands??? Im getting confused and hoping you guys can offer some advice!
Cheers
Lucy

Click to expand...

If I was doing this then I'd use a single change at Stafford between a Crosscountry train from Bristol and Virgin train to Liverpool. Same on the way back.

For example you can get the 1400 from Bristol to Stafford on the Wednesday afternoon then 22 minute wait for the 1624 to Liverpool arriving 1720.

Going back on the Friday there's a similar 20+ minute connection at Stafford, eg 0947 out of Liverpool onto 1101 from Stafford arriving back into Bristol at 1310.

For the above times and using split tickets splitting at Cheltenham Spa and Wolverhampton it's currently £162.10 return first class.

I wouldn't expect much in 1st on VT on the outward journey. Returning if they are quick off the mark and its not too busy you might get something. If they are quick enough, you don't eat slowly and if they are serving it at that time you might be able to finish your full English Breakfast by Stafford.

Depending on which time of day you are travelling, how about Bristol to Newport,then change for the Transport for Wales Premier service Newport to Chester.
This will include an excellent 3 course evening meal.Change at Chester for Liverpool.
The reverse can also be done, which includes full breakfast on the Chester to Newport portion.You will have to be up early though!

If there are cheap advances why not go Bristol - London transfer Paddington - Euston by tube then get Virgin trains direct from Euston - Liverpool Lime Street

I do Liverpool to Bristol (and back) a couple of times a year. You can do the journey with one change: Birmingham New Street is I think the most flexible, but Stafford works almost as well (possibly better as it has more trains to Liverpool although it may have less trains to Bristol than Birmingham) and the station there is a lot smaller than Birmingham, so is less bewildering to deal with. You can also change at Crewe or Wolverhampton, but I don't do those routinely.

Assuming that you change at Stafford, then for the Liverpool - Stafford leg you have a choice of one Virgin train an hour or 2 London Northwestern Railway (LNR)* trains. By Virgin, it may be worth paying the extra for first class: you may well get a cup of tea and some food for free as well. By LNR, it's not worth paying for first class - there's no catering (so no free tea), and the standard class is perfectly good and in my experience will not be absolutely crowded, although it may be busy. If you change at Birmingham, then there is only LNR all the way from Liverpool to Birmingham.

For Stafford or Birmingham to Bristol, the trains are provided by Cross Country. For this leg I would definitely go first class: it's not so much that you get anything extra, but standard class on many Cross Country trains tends to be greatly overcrowded, and I appreciate the knowledge that I will be able to get a seat.

Now lets get to the difficult matter of paying for all this. If you get a walk-up fare (you turn up at the ticket office at Temple Meads and buy it there and then) it will cost you quite a lot - an off-peak 1st class return appears to be £220.30. This will let you use any trains taking a sensible (strictly any permitted) route between Bristol and Liverpool and back again leaving after 0930, so it is really quite flexible.

If you are prepared to book in advance, then split ticketing can save you money. There is a ticketing website which pays a commission to this forum at https://raileasy.trainsplit.com/?brand=railukforums, and running your planned journey (out 19/12 in the afternoon, back 21/12 in the morning) through it, I manage to get a first class fare of £146.23 - as long as you use the trains it tells you to. You could reduce this further if you were happy to travel standard class between Liverpool and Stafford or Birmingham, but that will involve booking tickets separately.

And good luck with your job interview.

* Edited to clarify - for complicated railway reasons, LNR is actually the same thing as West Midland Trains (WMT) that other posters have mentioned.

Would Bristol-Manchester-Liverpool be valid?

May I second the suggestion of doing your outward journey via Newport and Chester, on the 1731 from Newport.
You buy a standard class ticket throughout and a Business Class upgrade (£25) for the dining car
The disadvantage is that alcohol isnt free on TfW!

I hope others can come up with a good solution for the tickets involving split Advances - as other trains on the Chester- Newport line are Standard only (though the train about 09.20 from Chester is pretty empty after Shrewsbury).

First Advances, splitting at Stafford, come out at around £95-100 each way.

Going via Newport and Chester to Liverpool you would book Standard Advances at £43 (splitting at Newport, and giving yourself a bit of leeway there as you won't want to miss dinner!) or a flexible single ticket for £50, and book the Business Class Upgrade over the counter at Bristol.
Note that Chester to Liverpool is on Merseyrail, standard class only.