Changes to split ticket journey.

[AM9]

I am planning a trip from St Albans City to Sheffield in just over a week. I checked up on the best way to split the journey and received an itinerary that involved the final leg from Loughborough to Sheffield requiring a Derby stop.
Today, the same search on the same website offers a similar outbound journey except that it suggests a change from the Loughborough to Sheffield train at Derby to board a Cross Country train which gets to Sheffield four minutes later. As far as I can ascertain, the tickets are valid on either train and there are no planned engineering works between Derby and Sheffield on that day. Can anybody suggest why this has changed?

Also, on a slightly different tack; should there be major issues preventing the journey to be made on EM services, (nothing specific and not necessarily to do with current difficulties except of similar impact), provided that EM had agreed for their tickets to be valid on (say) LNER trains, would the group of tickets still be regarded the same as one end-to-end booking as clearly it wouldn't be possible to stop at the changeover points as per the NRCoT rules?

 

[yorkie]

What was your originally intended itinerary?
What tickets are held?

If LNER are accepting EMT tickets for journeys to Sheffield then you can use LNER as far as Doncaster (or Retford), for your journey to Sheffield.

 

[AM9]

What was your originally intended itinerary?
What tickets are held?

If LNER are accepting EMT tickets for journeys to Sheffield then you can use LNER as far as Doncaster (or Retford), for your journey to Sheffield.

Apologies for not replying earlier. My first question is regarding changes on the splits offered on the TrainsSplit engine a week earlier with the same search criteria which seems to offer same ticket split but for some reason suggests a change of actual trains used. Here is the relevant part of the itinerary:
Loughborough 09:48 - 10:42 Sheffield (EMT) - is the original route offered. The same search now offers a the 09:48 at LBO and then a change at Derby onto the 10:16 XC arriving at four minutes after the EMT train that I would originally be travelling on. The ticket combination required is still the same, a SVR from Kettering to DBY and a CDR from DBY to SHF. The requirement for trains used to have a scheduled stop at DBY is there of course, but there is no need to alight or change there.The SVR has a 2O restriction and the CDR has a 3B both of which are not before 09:00 on the day so no problems forcing or preventing a change at DBY.
I am beginninng to think that the search engines are constantly in discovery mode and sometimes dig a little deeper to shave a bit more off the price.

The second question was really a 'what if' one and although it was posted whilst NR was still struggling to fix the OLE damage at West Hampstead, it was more out of interest, as in if 'a blanket use other reasonable routes' call is made by EMT, would LNER accept a set of split tickets that they would be unlikely to be able to verify validity of except that of course it would be obvious that I wouldn't be making calls at the ticket change stations?

 

[yorkie]

A split at Derby is no different to "route via Derby" for the purposes of ticket acceptance.

By booking it as a through journey on an accredited splitting site you will have an itinerary which is clear, irrefutable evidence of one journey from St Albans to Sheffield. If LNER are accepting passengers who are making that journey, on tickets that would not normally be valid on the LNER route, then it's all fine.

In the unlikely event that you experienced problems it would be easy to forward the booking confirmation email to the relevant customer service department. If they continued to mistreat you, I'm sure the retailer would assist.

Of course booking it individually is still just as valid but doing it the way you propose makes it potentially easier and means you're not on your own in the unlikely event of a dispute.