Forcing an itinerary to use as little replacement bus as possible.

[DeeGee]

Hello again, I wonder if someone might be able to help me again, I've had much useful information recently.

Sunday, 23rd Jan, I wish to travel from Birmingham International to Grimsby Town.

South Transpennine is shut all day, so all trains through Grimsby Town are buses.

Every itinerary I try to get from NRE involves changing at Sheffield and taking a 3 hour bustitute via Doncaster and Scunthorpe. That's not really appealing, to be honest.

There are also RRBs between Lincoln and Grimsby, and that bustitution takes about an hour and a half, which is more acceptable to me, although less regular. I'm happy to spend a long connection in Lincoln, I know the city well, and I'll grab something to eat.

The last RRB from Lincoln is at 1950, and I'm trying to get a through itinerary of my last possible journey to print out in case there's major issues.

Problem is, every possible itinerary I search for via Lincoln sends me back to Newark and up the ECML to pick up the RRB from Doncaster, from where there's a two hour bustitution!

Should I just forget trying Lincoln? Or should I just make a note on paper, old-style, of the itinerary I want to do from the various sources? Of course, then, the problem is that EMR aren't actually publishing the RRB timetable and direct me to NRE, which doesn't show me an itinerary.

Or do I just want to search for an itinerary from Birmingham to Lincoln to get me to Lincoln in plenty of time for my RRB?

The combination of tickets I was looking at was a return Cleethorpes-Nottingham (via Lincoln), then a return NOT-Coventry (Any permitted so valid via BHI). If I'm going to have to bustitute via DON, then I need the Any Permitted CLE-NOT ticket which is £3.10 more expensive.

[EDIT, added ticket information]

 

[yorkie]

Have you tried the advanced options in Trainsplit?

Before you look, you may want to check the itinerary is possible using www.fastjp.com which lets you quickly put together an itinerary without fares being calculated.

You can specify additional interchange time by forcing a change request at a particular station and then type the additional interchange time you require (this is added onto the minimum interchange time)

Hope this helps

 

[DeeGee]

Have you tried the advanced options in Trainsplit?

Before you look, you may want to check the itinerary is possible using www.fastjp.com which lets you quickly put together an itinerary without fares being calculated.

You can specify additional interchange time by forcing a change request at a particular station and then type the additional interchange time you require (this is added onto the minimum interchange time)

Hope this helps

Thanks.

AVOID DONCASTER does it!

 

[yorkie]

Great, that was simple!

On other sites, you can run out of options to force the itinerary you want, but with Trainsplit you can really tailor it to your requirements. The only site that comes close is NRE, which doesn't sell tickets (but some sites will honour itineraries generated by NRE)

 

[DeeGee]

Great, that was simple!

Thanks, never having used fastjp, that's an excellent site, thanks for the heads-up.

 

[gray1404]

Just bear in mind that a Fast JP itinerary cannot necessarily be relied upon in the event of disruption. You need to get an accredited retailer to be able to produce the itinerary such as Train Split. You should ideally purchase the ticket there as well as you then have evidence of contract.

 

[DeeGee]

So, in an ideal world, I need to reproduce the itinerary elsewhere? Now, that could be interesting as NRE is still not playing ball!

Not sure I want to use Trainsplit, though. I know the tickets I want, don't fancy paying the share of the saving!

But I suppose these are the risks you take with esoteric ticketing?

 

[yorkie]

So, in an ideal world, I need to reproduce the itinerary elsewhere? Now, that could be interesting as NRE is still not playing ball!

Not sure I want to use Trainsplit, though. I know the tickets I want, don't fancy paying the share of the saving!

But I suppose these are the risks you take with esoteric ticketing?

That's not a reason not to use Trainsplit per se; there is nothing to stop you using Trainsplit to search for each leg separately. You can add each leg to your basket and pay for the whole journey under one booking. There will be no share of saving charged.

If you already happen to know which combination of tickets is cheaper, fair enough, feel free to use any provider, but some people use Trainsplit to find the cheapest combination and then book elsewhere, which is rather harsh on Trainsplit (and if everyone did that, the site would cease to exist!)

The main reason I suggest using FastJP.com before using Trainsplit, to generate the itinerary you need, is because it uses the same journey planner and you will get quicker results if you are just doing an itinerary search.

Note that if trains are retimed between the time of booking and travel it can be advantageous to have a through itinerary as evidence of a contract; this can also be useful in the event of disruption. If you have a through itinerary on Trainsplit and are mistreated by a train company, Trainsplit would help you in the event of any dispute. By all means book each leg separately if you wish, but you won't have that additional protection and would potentially need to do more legwork yourself if problems do occur.

 

[MotCO]

AVOID DONCASTER does it!

Isn't that a bonus (smiley emoji)

 

[SickyNicky]

Just bear in mind that a Fast JP itinerary cannot necessarily be relied upon in the event of disruption. You need to get an accredited retailer to be able to produce the itinerary such as Train Split. You should ideally purchase the ticket there as well as you then have evidence of contract.

Indeed. It's also worth bearing in mind that itineraries generated by FastJP are not checked against fares and thus are not necessarily Permitted Routes. So you might actually need to split tickets to get fares against them.