NRE suggests advances on most of the trains even when it won't offer the super-off-peak - am I right in thinking that means reservations must be available?
Again though I can get NRE to show the super-off-peak outward on the 10th, just not with a return date of the 13th. And I can get super-off-peak for a return on the 13th, just not with an outward date of the 10th. So that also says to me that it can't be anything related to unavailable seats on the 10th or 13th.
I haven't purchased the ticket yet, with it being flexible I was going to buy at the last minute. I was really just using the journey planners to see what sort time restrictions existed for the different varieties of off-peak. I can get GWR's site to add the super-off-peak return to the basket (outward on 10th at 09:32, return on 13th on 10:04). Does it query reservations before adding to the basket, or only when you actually buy?
I posted the update below couple of days later (on the 9th), it looks like the forum software has merged it into my previous post.
Some more data points that don't help to explain this, but I'm just recording them for the sake of it:
1) The exact date when the problem occurs is a booking that crosses the 12th/13th October. Outward journey must be on or before the 12th; the return journey must be on or after the 13th.
2) Although there is no English restriction text for YT, the electronic data does still show in brfares. According to the electronic data, the time restrictions applied to this ticket are changing on the 12th (and getting worse, from a passenger perspective, but I digress!). There is one set of restrictions for journeys up to the 11th, and another from the 12th onwards. This 11th/12th boundary for restrictions changing is interestingly close to the 12th/13th boundary that I found when searching in NRE, but isn't an exact match.
3) After some manual searching in brfares, I found another journey with time restrictions that change across the 11th/12th: a London Terminals to Penzance super-off-peak return, restriction code YX. However NRE is quite happy to suggest the super-off-peak return on such a journey, even when crossing the 11th/12th, or 12th/13th, date boundaries. However unlike YT, the YX code does have an English description, and its page on NRE does work.
In summary, I don't think the change in time restrictions on the 12th has anything to do with this problem directly. But maybe broken YT restriction is an accidental side-effect of having to update the English text for for the new restrictions.
Another update, on 14th October:
And as of today the Ely-Taunton ticket has changed restriction code from YT to YU. Which is probably related to YT disappearing from the National Rail site when I started this thread. I guess expecting these kind of changes to be properly synced with each other is asking too much
