BillyBoy
Member
I’ve just had an excruciating exchange of tweets with Northern but, combined with a bit of research of previous posts on here, I think I’ve got there in the end. Posting for interest. And confirmation.
It all started with seeing my daughter off home on Sunday afternoon from Ilkley [ILK] to Kirkstall Forge [KLF]. She normally buys tickets on her phone but whoever’s app she uses said there were no trains until Monday morning.
She therefore assumed (wrongly as it turns out) she’d have to go into Leeds [LDS] and back out again. So I took her to Ilkley station in time for the LDS train and bought her a ticket to KLF from the machine (£5/£3.30 with her railcard).
I then noticed it said not valid via LDS. The ticket office was open so we asked in there. The man knew that there were no direct trains to KLF on a Sunday, didn’t suggest an alternative and said it should be OK as long as my daughter didn’t leave the station at LDS.
Fortunately she was OK, more by luck though. I thought this was an unsatisfactory state of affairs and decided to get the official line from Northern.
I started by asking them how to get from ILK to KLF on a Sunday as all their website suggests is to wait until Monday. Their first response was, very unhelpfully, that there are no services to KLF on a Sunday and directed me to the Wharfedale Line timetable.
I persisted and their next reply, which I believe to be a correct one, was to change trains at Shipley [SHY]. So I asked, as their website didn’t show it, how I would find out the train times and how I could purchase a ticket online.
They directed me to National Rail Enquiries [NRE], which does indeed show the connections, and said that tickets start at £6.70. I asked Northern why it was more expensive on a Sunday, with the added inconvenience of having to change trains, than it was on other days.
Northern’s response was that I would have to ask NRE that and forwarded my tweet on to them. NRE wasted no time in pointing out that they did not set the prices.
Back to Northern who apologised and said they would report this to their fares team. I concluded by asking them if the £5 not via LDS ticket, if purchased at the station, would be valid via SHY and Northern confirmed that it would.
So what is my understanding? Looking at previous posts on here I think this issue falls into the same category of whether you can go from ILK to LDS via SHY, the answer being technically no but it being generally accepted that you can.
Most booking engines, including Northern’s own, are strictly applying the rules. NRE’s is more helpful in that it actually suggests you can make the journey on a Sunday rather than waiting until Monday morning. However the £6.70 it quotes is made up of two single tickets, ILK to SHY and SHY to KLF. Nowhere can you pay £5 online.
Any thoughts or comments appreciated.
It all started with seeing my daughter off home on Sunday afternoon from Ilkley [ILK] to Kirkstall Forge [KLF]. She normally buys tickets on her phone but whoever’s app she uses said there were no trains until Monday morning.
She therefore assumed (wrongly as it turns out) she’d have to go into Leeds [LDS] and back out again. So I took her to Ilkley station in time for the LDS train and bought her a ticket to KLF from the machine (£5/£3.30 with her railcard).
I then noticed it said not valid via LDS. The ticket office was open so we asked in there. The man knew that there were no direct trains to KLF on a Sunday, didn’t suggest an alternative and said it should be OK as long as my daughter didn’t leave the station at LDS.
Fortunately she was OK, more by luck though. I thought this was an unsatisfactory state of affairs and decided to get the official line from Northern.
I started by asking them how to get from ILK to KLF on a Sunday as all their website suggests is to wait until Monday. Their first response was, very unhelpfully, that there are no services to KLF on a Sunday and directed me to the Wharfedale Line timetable.
I persisted and their next reply, which I believe to be a correct one, was to change trains at Shipley [SHY]. So I asked, as their website didn’t show it, how I would find out the train times and how I could purchase a ticket online.
They directed me to National Rail Enquiries [NRE], which does indeed show the connections, and said that tickets start at £6.70. I asked Northern why it was more expensive on a Sunday, with the added inconvenience of having to change trains, than it was on other days.
Northern’s response was that I would have to ask NRE that and forwarded my tweet on to them. NRE wasted no time in pointing out that they did not set the prices.
Back to Northern who apologised and said they would report this to their fares team. I concluded by asking them if the £5 not via LDS ticket, if purchased at the station, would be valid via SHY and Northern confirmed that it would.
So what is my understanding? Looking at previous posts on here I think this issue falls into the same category of whether you can go from ILK to LDS via SHY, the answer being technically no but it being generally accepted that you can.
Most booking engines, including Northern’s own, are strictly applying the rules. NRE’s is more helpful in that it actually suggests you can make the journey on a Sunday rather than waiting until Monday morning. However the £6.70 it quotes is made up of two single tickets, ILK to SHY and SHY to KLF. Nowhere can you pay £5 online.
Any thoughts or comments appreciated.
