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Advance fares with an hour break

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darloscott

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Hi guys

Just after a bit of advice, I've found an advance fare which involves an hour drop back at a main station (Birmingham in this case) but I don't seem to be able to book it anywhere as all the journey planners will only offer me the quickest journey. It shows on the split ticketing sites as available but I can't actually get any site to issue it. NRE will allow me to buy it but then when it puts you through to a company site to purchase they all default to the fastest journey giving prices more than double.
Is there anybody's system who allows you put in say an hour layover in a journey similar to how DB's site works? I've tried XC (who the journey is with!), TFW, TPE and LNER but can't seem to do it.

Scott
 
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Starmill

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As you haven't even told us what your journey is there will be fairly limited advice we can offer.

It shows on the split ticketing sites as available but I can't actually get any site to issue it.
That's concerning - why? What happens?

NRE will allow me to buy it but then when it puts you through to a company site to purchase they all default to the fastest journey giving prices more than double.
Try forwarding it to the TransPennine Express website from NRE instead.
 

darloscott

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It's a York to Cardiff advance single for Sunday... but with an hour drop back in Birmingham seemingly
 

yorkie

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Hi guys

Just after a bit of advice, I've found an advance fare which involves an hour drop back at a main station (Birmingham in this case) but I don't seem to be able to book it anywhere as all the journey planners will only offer me the quickest journey. It shows on the split ticketing sites as available but I can't actually get any site to issue it. NRE will allow me to buy it but then when it puts you through to a company site to purchase they all default to the fastest journey giving prices more than double.
Is there anybody's system who allows you put in say an hour layover in a journey similar to how DB's site works? I've tried XC (who the journey is with!), TFW, TPE and LNER but can't seem to do it.

Scott
You can do this providing you do not leave the station (other than to walk between applicable Birmingham Stations, if appropriate to your journey) on any site that allows additional interchange time. I am confused as to why it shows as "available" but you can't get the site to issue it, but without knowing the exact itinerary you are looking for, we cannot test it ourselves and therefore we are unable to provide the best possible advice.
 

darloscott

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Hi guys
Sorry for the late reply. I saw IanD's original post which worked wonders for me. It was an advance York to Cardiff for Sunday - the split sites were offering it as £39.25 (26-30) with an hour break in Birmingham which I couldn't get any site to offer... the journey planners would only give me a 'straight through' itinerary with a 10 min connection which was about £82.
Ian's suggestion of adding Lichfield worked perfectly giving me a 25 min connection at Cheltenham, reducing the journey time overall too.
 

yorkie

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Hi guys
Sorry for the late reply. I saw IanD's original post which worked wonders for me. It was an advance York to Cardiff for Sunday - the split sites were offering it as £39.25 (26-30) with an hour break in Birmingham which I couldn't get any site to offer... the journey planners would only give me a 'straight through' itinerary with a 10 min connection which was about £82.
Ian's suggestion of adding Lichfield worked perfectly giving me a 25 min connection at Cheltenham, reducing the journey time overall too.
I'm really confused and don't understand what your requirements are; it's also confusing to hear you were offered an itinerary but then weren't offered it. Sorry we can't help in these circumstances but it sounds like you got what you wanted in the end.
 

darloscott

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I'm probably not explaining it very well.
It was an advance ticket from York to Cardiff, with a connection in Birmingham of around 75 minutes. This was all on one ticket, not split ticketing, hence it needed to be a through journey. When I went to replicate this in the journey planner on XC (also tried LNER and TPE at least) it would only offer tickets with a 15 minute connection at Birmingham and I couldn't find any option to extend the layover (i.e. to force the 75 minute wait) to find the cheaper (£39 v £82) fare. That is what I was trying to find out whether it is possible to do that... I know it is on DB's site for European tickets. I couldn't find anything obvious, although I did manage it on NRE, but when it sent the request to a TOC site they reverted to the standard 'first connection' journey.
 

robbeech

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it appears you have achieved what you we’re trying to but for future reference Trainscanbecheaper.info has these facilities like trainsplit but without the split part.
 

yorkie

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Ah, so you were offered the itinerary you wanted, but it was cheaper to get a combination of tickets, and you wanted to pay more for a through fare?

If so, I don't understand why you'd want to pay more (unless you think that you have greater rights by not splitting? that isn't the case as I posted yesterday) but as @robbeech says the Trainscanbecheaper website is the same as Trainsplit but without splits.
 

darloscott

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Ah, so you were offered the itinerary you wanted, but it was cheaper to get a combination of tickets, and you wanted to pay more for a through fare?

If so, I don't understand why you'd want to pay more (unless you think that you have greater rights by not splitting? that isn't the case as I posted yesterday) but as @robbeech says the Trainscanbecheaper website is the same as Trainsplit but without splits.
I achieved what I wanted - better actually - but it wasn't a combination of tickets, it was all on one ticket (York to Cardiff) it was just a lot cheaper with a longer wait in the middle. Unfortunately the TOC sites wouldn't sell me that as they refused to allow a 75 min connection when a 15 min (ie the train an hour in front) was available. This was of course at a much higher price.
It was just my frustration at being able to see a ticket but not being able to buy it, as I fell foul of that not long ago. NRE allows you to specify a longer layover between trains, and offers the cheaper fare - but when the booking is transferred to a TOC site for purchase they seem to default back to 'quickest journey' mode.
 

kieron

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It was just my frustration at being able to see a ticket but not being able to buy it, as I fell foul of that not long ago. NRE allows you to specify a longer layover between trains, and offers the cheaper fare - but when the booking is transferred to a TOC site for purchase they seem to default back to 'quickest journey' mode.
I think what happens is that NRE tells the third party site what you selected. If the site doesn't understand everything, take you to the "select an itinerary" one, displaying whatever you can select with its own GUI which it thinks is closest to your request. Is that what it did for you, or did it take you directly to a single itinerary you hadn't requested on NRE?

Clicking through from NRE to TPE worked for me when I tried it, but there could be any number of reasons for the difference. If it's still happening for you and you feel motivated, you could contact TPE about the problem.
 

yorkie

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Most websites will re-plan a journey when you click to buy, but the Atos/Worldline WebTIS sites (which includes TPE) do accept the itinerary provided by NRE.

trainscanbecheaper.info (through fares only) and trainsplit.com (including splits) allow the same advanced options as at www.fastjp.com, ie. up to 3 via/avoid locations, include/exclude TOCs and additional interchange time.http://www.fastjp.com
 

IanD

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Thought I'd got the journey wrong but obviously not. I looked up the same journey on the Virgin trains website and got the same results without having to specify anything other than start and end point. However, a lot of other sites were defaulting to York-Huddersfiled-Manchester-Shrewsbury-Cardiff routing. I did wonder about mentioning splitting, always used to save loads by splitting when my daughter was regularly travelling to Cardiff for uni, mostly from Milton Keynes but often from the Yorkshire area if she'd been visiting relatives.
 
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