Welcome to the forum! What you are proposing is known as 'split ticketing'. Split ticketing is a permitted and very common practice. You have almost all of the same rights as if you had bought a through ticket. The only limitations are that you must always take trains that stop at your split point (obviously not an issue if splitting in London), and that you must abide by any route or operator restrictions applying to each of your tickets (in the case of an Advance, this is likely to be operator-specific, e.g. "SWR only" or "Avanti only").
However, for a combination of tickets to be considered a valid split, they need to join up - condition 14.2 of the
National Rail Conditions of Travel (NRCoT) refers:
you may use a combination of two or more Tickets to make a journey provided that the train services you use Call at the station(s) where you change from one Ticket to another
Therefore, to comply with this requirement, it could be argued that you need to buy one of your Advance tickets to cover the Underground journey between Euston and Waterloo, i.e. one of them would need to be to/from London Underground Zone 1. Many people simply use Oyster or contactless PAYG to cross London - but it could leave you open to suggestions that you are making two separate journeys if you do this. Personally speaking, I would suggest buying splits that include the Underground journey.
If your splits include the Underground, then the answers to your questions are as follows:
(i) Yes, this consitutes one journey under condition 14.2 of the NRCoT.
(ii) No, there is no maximum connection time. Clearly, if you had a huge amount of time - for example 12 hours, without this being something like an overnight stay following a late train that arrives too late for the last onward train of the day - then it might again be argued that you aren't really making one journey.
However, some retailers, such as the forum's ticket site, will allow you to add multi-hour "unnecessary" stops. If you had an itinerary clearly showing your journey from end to end, even with a prolonged change, this would be clear evidence that you were making a single journey.
If you are only talking about a few hours, I don't think there would be any issue. If, as you mention, you are buying an Avanti Superfare, then unfortunately it isn't possible to buy this anywhere other than through Avanti's dedicated Superfare site (this is arguably anti-competitive but it is difficult for third party retailers to do anything about it).
(iii) Some people would argue that you must stick to one 'definition' of what your journey is when using split tickets, i.e. whether it's Portsmouth to Manchester (in which case, if you catch your booked train no compensation is due), or whether it's Portsmouth to London (in which case, Delay Repay would be available if you arrive at Waterloo 15+ mins late).
However, there is nothing I can see in the NRCoT which supports this view. Condition 14.2 says that you "may" use splits to make a journey - in order words, it's a right that you can choose to exercise at your own discretion. I don't see that there is anything forcing you to 'declare' or otherwise decide what your journey is, until such time as you interact with the railway to do something like claiming Delay Repay, asking to travel on the next train due to delays etc.
Personally speaking, I feel that the limitations of split ticketing make it perfectly reasonable to define your journey in whichever way suits you. It's arguably also perfectly reasonable to receive some compensation for a delay which has clearly occurred, even if it didn't affect your arrival time at your destination. You may well have needed to rush across London, where you were expecting a relaxing transfer and wait - and thus been unable to get food & drink at reasonably priced supermarkets near the station, for example.
Therefore, my view would be that yes, you can claim Delay Repay on the basis of your Portsmouth-London ticket from SWR in this scenario.
(iv) Yes, you can take the next Avanti service provided you have a valid connection and as above, that your tickets join up. That means you must allow sufficient time in your planned itinerary to cross London:
- 15 minutes to change at Waterloo
- Between 20 and 30 minutes to take the Tube or make your own way ("transfer" as it's called in the rail industry data) between Waterloo and Euston. The duration and mode depends on the time of day and day of the week; you can see the applicable time and mode on BR Times under "fixed links" (remembering to select the correct day of the week).
- 15 minutes to change at Euston
You can, if you want, have your Euston-Manchester ticket endorsed for the later train at the ticket office. But this isn't mandatory; your ticket is valid as-is - if asked, you just need to explain that your train to Waterloo was late/cancelled and this caused you to miss your connection.
(v) Yes, Superfare tickets are subject to the NRCoT in the same way as any other ticket. Therefore they can be combined with other tickets to consitute a single journey.
(vi) As above, this is optional. You can go to the ticket office if you want to get a new seat reservation, but you can equally obtain that on your own through the GWR website (
create an account, login and go to View bookings, then select "Create a seat/bike reservation").
