Insane trip ticketing help

[Muzer]

Hi all! I'm planning a completely ludicrous trip for late April and I'd really appreciate it if anyone has any ideas for ticketing. Currently I'm estimating it would come to about £226.20 (plus hotels).

I want this trip to go as smoothly as is feasible with the timings I'm suggesting so while I'd normally be happy with ludicrous anomalies I feel like being a bit more restrained to what could be seen as reasonable in this case.

So, the trip I'm planning is:

* Thursday 20th April: Train after work Euston-Holyhead (my friend will be joining me coming up from Southampton Central)
* Friday 21th April: Holyhead-Chester-Manchester Oxford Road-Preston-Barrow in Furness-Carlisle-Edinburgh-Cowdenbeath-Cardenden-Glenrothes with Thornton-Kirkcaldy-Aberdeen (basically getting in a wide selection of the loco-hauled passenger services of the North West and Scotland) (you can see the timings for most of the trip here: https://tim32.org/trains/loco-insanity.txt )
* Overnight: Sleeper to Preston (my friend will be continuing to London and onwards back home to Southampton)
* Saturday 22nd April: Railtour, then in evening service trains Preston-Chester
* Sunday 23rd April: Return to London.


As you might have gathered from the lack of specific timings, I'd rather keep it general and avoid too many booked trains (besides the sleeper).

I'm currently thinking:

* £107.80 - London Terminals to Aberdeen SSR (making use of the overnight BoJ easement at Crewe)
* £31.20 - Winsford, Hartford or Acton Bridge to Holyhead SVR (main ticket is not valid to Chester, this adds validity to Holyhead via Chester from Crewe on the outward and to Warrington on the return)
* £12.20 (me only) - Winsford - Chester SVR
* £75 - sleeper supplement (booking two people in the same compartment but getting off at different stops might be fun!)
* However much a hotel a Holyhead would cost
* Cost of the railtour

...And my friend will be getting similar tickets but from Southampton instead of London Terminals.

Any improvements on all of this?

 

[robbeech]

Aren't sleeper prices the same regardless of where you get on and off? And you have tickets and are paying the supplement, so I think if this is the case then the easiest thing to do there is to book them both to Euston and inform a member of train crew on the day that one of you is alighting short to keep their numbers accurate.

 

[Muzer]

Aren't sleeper prices the same regardless of where you get on and off? And you have tickets and are paying the supplement, so I think if this is the case then the easiest thing to do there is to book them both to Euston and inform a member of train crew on the day that one of you is alighting short to keep their numbers accurate.

For supplements, they do seem to be the same (booking an advance on the other hand gives me different prices depending on whether I'm going to Preston or Euston). Booking them both to Euston sounds like a plan! I guess as long as they'd be happy with that.

 

[robbeech]

For a berth they aren't going to use it again that night so it wouldn't matter. I assume that a competent ticket office would be able to book them exactly as they should be but to do it online which is easier for everyone involved my advice would be to book both to EUS.