Ely to London off-peak day return, returning at 1714

[arb]

An off-peak day return from Ely to Kings Cross has no evening peak restrictions for the return journey as far as I can tell, from reading both http://www.brfares.com/#faredetail?orig=ELY&dest=KGX&grpd=1072&tkt=CDR and http://www.thameslinkrailway.com/tickets-and-fares/off-peak/.

However all the journey planners that I've tried (NRE, VTEC and Great Northern's own planner) suggest that this ticket is not valid specifically on the 1714 departure from Kings Cross (and only that service - the ones either side of it are apparently fine).

Am I missing something? Or is this a glitch in all of the journey planners?

 

[CyrusWuff]

Delete...Missed the easement.

 

[Paul Kelly]

Or is this a glitch in all of the journey planners?

It's not the journey planners' fault; it's a problem in the way Great Northern have encoded the restriction. You can also see it in the BR Fares link you posted above if you scroll down to UNPUBLISHED RESTRICTIONS, which is what is used by online journey planners:

Not valid to depart	LONDON KINGS CROSS	1629–1643	on any TOC
Not valid to depart	LONDON KINGS CROSS	1645–1743	on any TOC
Not valid to depart	LONDON KINGS CROSS	1745–1813	on any TOC
Not valid to depart	LONDON KINGS CROSS	1815–1843	on any TOC
Not valid to depart	LONDON KINGS CROSS	1845–1900	on any TOC

You can see the restrictions are specially hard-coded to block travel on all evening departures from King's Cross except those departing at 1644, 1744, 1814 and 1844. These all correspond to departures to King's Lynn. It looks to me that someone at Great Northern has overlooked the need to include the 1714 departure, which only goes as far as Ely, in the easement.

 

[miami]

The terms on your ticket are at this site.

http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/j8

"Travel is permitted on services from London Kings Cross to Ely, Littleport, Downham Market, Watlington, Kings Lynn, March, Lakenheath, Newmarket, Dullingham and Shippea Hill between 16:29 and 19:00."

The journey planners failure seems irellevent.

 

[arb]

Thanks both - I had looked at both of the sources you quote, but had misread the unpublished restrictions, and had (wrongly) concluded that they did match the English description. Therefore I couldn't explain to myself why the 1714 was being excluded by the journey planners, and was starting to wonder if there was another obscure rule somewhere that was overriding the restriction text!