Avanti on the august bank holiday.

[plugwash]

I'm planning to go to cambridge from stockport (or maybe my local station near stockport) over the bank holiday at the end of August. Normally when I do this trip I just buy an off-peak return on the day of travel. though this time I may buy in advance to try and get a reservation.

However the routes using avanti are currently showing as not ticketable in the NRE app, I presume this is because the services have been marked in the electronic data as mandatory reservation and no reservations have been released yet.

Does anyone have any info (including educated guesses) on:

1. When avanti will release reservations for the August bank holiday?
2. How likely timetable changes are between now and then?
3. To what extent if-any Avanti are currently enforcing reservations at Euston and Stockport?

 

[jonnyfan]

From what I've seen on their Twitter feed the timetable and tickets for that weekend won't be released until 20/8/21.
And I've not seen any enforcement of reservations, they are only recommended now.

 

[rg177]

There are planned engineering works on the WCML on the whole weekend which will affect services.

However, the only major day of closures for the Euston to Manchester route appears to be the Sunday with replacement buses shown on the Network Rail website as follows:

• Between Stockport and Stoke-on-Trent
• Between Stoke and Macclesfield
• Between Wilmslow-Macclesfield-Stoke-Stafford
• Buses between Nuneaton and Birmingham via Coleshill Parkway
• Buses between Birmingham New Street and Nuneaton/Tamworth
• Buses between Rugby and Northampton

Unfortunately further information at the moment is rather thin on the ground, hence the very late timetable release date.

Hazarding a guess this would suggest services will be diverted to all run via Wilmslow/Crewe.