Once upon a time Crewe had a Travel Centre (TC) and a Booking Office (BO).
The Travel Centre was for general enquiries, bookings in advance, reservations for a week next Thursday etc etc
The Booking Office was for buying tickets, usually for immediate travel.
Following the remodelling of the station entrance there is no TC (the site is now an - empty - retail unit), just a three unit booking office.
Yesterday I turned up at 1340 for a 1350 train. There was a queue. Two clerks on duty. One was dealing with an elderly couple arranging a future trip to London and looking for best value advance tickets - "so, if we get the 1322 on the Tuesday we can get £50 tickets, but what about the Wednesday?". The Clerk replied, after a bit of research, "well - I can do £42.50 on the 1122 or £36.80 on the 1422" [I paraphrase - the detail was different but you get the point]. At which point hubby arrived and the whole conversation opened up further - "Would Tuesday be better than Wednesday Bob?" "Dunno, it's up to you really" etc.
At the second point a lady was negotiating how to get herself, her three children and her sister to somewhere by means of a combination of Family Railcards, Two-Together and so on, complete with manually filling in a Railcard application form!
Bring back our Travel Centre!
The Travel Centre was for general enquiries, bookings in advance, reservations for a week next Thursday etc etc
The Booking Office was for buying tickets, usually for immediate travel.
Following the remodelling of the station entrance there is no TC (the site is now an - empty - retail unit), just a three unit booking office.
Yesterday I turned up at 1340 for a 1350 train. There was a queue. Two clerks on duty. One was dealing with an elderly couple arranging a future trip to London and looking for best value advance tickets - "so, if we get the 1322 on the Tuesday we can get £50 tickets, but what about the Wednesday?". The Clerk replied, after a bit of research, "well - I can do £42.50 on the 1122 or £36.80 on the 1422" [I paraphrase - the detail was different but you get the point]. At which point hubby arrived and the whole conversation opened up further - "Would Tuesday be better than Wednesday Bob?" "Dunno, it's up to you really" etc.
At the second point a lady was negotiating how to get herself, her three children and her sister to somewhere by means of a combination of Family Railcards, Two-Together and so on, complete with manually filling in a Railcard application form!
Bring back our Travel Centre!