London Paddington to Great Malvern Off-Peak Confusion

[LordRatcatcher]

I have an Off-Peak ticket for London Paddington to Worcester Foregate St and a separate standard single for Worcester Foregate St to Great Malvern.

According to trainline.com the 17.22 from London Paddington to Great Malvern is Off-Peak, but the same train as far as Worcester Foregate St is Peak.

Can I travel on the 17.22 with that ticket combination?

 

[Romilly]

Can you tell us precisely which London-Worcester ticket you have, as there a number of different possibilities. If you tell us the price, and whether it's a single or return, we can probably work it out. If it is a return, are you using the outward leg of a London-Worcester-London ticket, or the return leg of a Worcester-London-Worcester ticket?

That said, time restrictions attach to particular tickets, rather than trains or journeys. So if you are using multiple (i.e. split) tickets for a journey, for each portion of the journey you must comply with the restrictions for the ticket for that portion. In your case, you cannot rely on the restrictions for a London-Malvern ticket just because you have London-Worcester and Worcester-Malvern tickets. [Edit: this can work both ways - although it seems that it may work against you in this case, it can be that a morning journey can be started earlier than would otherwise be the case by buying a short-distance unrestricted ticket for the first bit of the journey, and then a cheap long-distance ticket from the first station you leave after the relevant 8am/9am/9.30am time bar.]

 

[LordRatcatcher]

It was more a theoretical question (I'm actually travelling on a later train on the return leg of a Super Off-Peak ticket). I was wondering what my options would be for the return leg of the journey if I bought an Off-Peak return from Worcester to London (via Evesham), but you've answered that in the second paragraph - I need to comply with the restrictions for each portion of the journey, which makes perfect sense.

Many thanks!

 

[Gareth Marston]

there's only an Anytime Day Single product available between Worcester Stations and Great Malvern so you can use any train between those two points.

If you have the North Cotswolds Off Peak Return - Worcester/Paddington then the 1722 departure is no go as the off peak is not valid at that time.

 

[NSEFAN]

I have an Off-Peak ticket for London Paddington to Worcester Foregate St and a separate standard single for Worcester Foregate St to Great Malvern.

According to trainline.com the 17.22 from London Paddington to Great Malvern is Off-Peak, but the same train as far as Worcester Foregate St is Peak.

Can I travel on the 17.22 with that ticket combination?

There's no such thing as a peak or off-peak train, when it comes to fares. The only restrictions are for particular tickets. If you're using split tickets, then each leg needs to be valid for time restrictions in its own right.

Each ticket has a restriction code, which you can view the details of on National Rail. For example, nationalrail.co.uk/8X shows the details for restriction code 8X. Personally, I use brfares.com to see the ticket restriction code for a fare, but then use nationalrail.co.uk to view the latest information for that restriction.