Moreton-in-Marsh to Birmingham via Worcestershire Parkway?

[Gagravarr]

I'm looking to travel from Moreton-in-Marsh to Birmingham (New Street or Moor Street).

For an off-peak day trip, based on https://www.brfares.com/!fares?orig=MIM&dest=0418 it looks like there's a crazy-expensive "via Oxford" ticket, or a much more reasonable "via Worcester" option

Checking train times, it appears that changing at the new-ish Worcestershire Parkway is the quickest option. However, I can't seem to get any websites to sell me a ticket for that (have tried GWR and LNER) - no ticket price is shown

Trainsplit only manage to offer me a ticket by splitting at Evesham, which has an Any Permitted ticket to Birmingham

Is there a return ticket that's valid from Moreton to Birmingham changing at Worcestershire Parkway?

(Tomorrow, leaving around 9am, there's a 09:18 - 10:45 via Worcestershire Parkway, or 09:18 - 11:09 via Worcester Foregate Street, so I'd prefer to take the former)

 

[Benjwri]

Unfortunately as it stands Worcestershire Parkway doesn’t count as a Worcester station, and therefore you must travel via Worcester Shrub Hill for your ticket to be valid. It wouldn’t be valid for the Cross Country train you want to take between Worcestershire Parkway and University.

 

[Haywain]

It wouldn’t be valid for the Cross Country train you want to take between Worcestershire Parkway and University.

There's a chance the guard would accept it if asked, but it would be high risk to change there without that certainty.

 

[Watershed]

The "via Worcester" ticket is valid changing onto XC at Worcestershire Parkway (WOP) - it's just that journey planners cannot show this.

It's valid because with tickets that are routed via X, one of the permitted routes is to determine the combination of permitted routes from the origin to X, and from X to the destination. In this case, the only permitted route from Moreton-in-Marsh (MIM) to Worcester is via WOP, so that covers off the first bit of the journey. From Worcester to Birmingham (BIR), going via WOP is also permitted. Thus in theory you could go MIM - Worcester - WOP - BIR.

Since this is a walk-up ticket with no restrictions on break of journey, you can start late and finish short during your journey, and thus you aren't compelled to undertake the double-back. You can simply change at WOP.

Online journey planners can't offer itineraries that involve starting late or finishing short and so they would only be able to offer a route changing onto XC at WOP if it involved the aforementioned double-back to Worcester. Clearly, that's a much slower route than just changing at Worcester or WOP and so it won't come up by default, and I'm not sure there's any combination of via points you could use to have any site come up with it.

There's a chance the guard would accept it if asked, but it would be high risk to change there without that certainty.

The guard would be obliged to accept it, given it's a valid route. The XC Senior Conductors seen on the Turbostar routes seem to have inherited the same, slightly more relaxed attitude to tickets as their WMT colleagues (perhaps it's an ex-Central Trains/Regional Railways thing?), so I wouldn't be massively concerned either way.