route:oxford
Established Member
- Joined
- 1 Nov 2008
- Messages
- 4,949
Looking for tickets last night from Oxford to Stirling, I was disappointed about the level of manipulation I had to engage in, in order to find the right ticket.
My first port-of-call was National Rail Enquiries, where I found that the cheapest single from Oxford to Stirling was £128.50. However, the system only reported services routing via Banbury.
I then amended, the routing as "via Kings Cross", to find that the cheapest single fare became £47.00 taking the 10:01 service from Oxford.
So, off to EastCoast.co.uk to buy the ticket.
Unfortunately, East Coast didn't put me on the direct 10:01 service to London, but the later 10:08 changing onto the 10:29 from Didcot, arriving into London at 11:16 for onward circle routing to Kings Cross. This ticket came with advance reservations on the 10:29 from Didcot.
44 minutes is technically perfectly adequate for getting from Paddington to Kings Cross, but I'd prefer a more generous connection.
As far as I can find, however, the main dashboard for East Coast doesn't have the option to allow more time for connections. So try the "Shaw Trust Approved" text only version. It allows me to choose more time - but finds no tickets. Try a few time, but finds no tickets. I guess that there must be down-time on the booking service and wait half an hour.
So half an hour later, go back through the eastcoast text based booking system, choose a longer connetion time, and get myself on the 09:31 service from Oxford to London (no seat reservation), connecting with the 12:00 Highland Chieftan, all for around £44.00. A good price I think.
I didn't do anything odd or peculiar to get the right ticket, no breaking journeys, partial use of tickets, multiple tickets-but I still had to manipulate the system excessively to get a fairly "normal" ticket that should really have been on NRE at the first enquiry and available on the headline dashboard of EastCoast.
My first port-of-call was National Rail Enquiries, where I found that the cheapest single from Oxford to Stirling was £128.50. However, the system only reported services routing via Banbury.
I then amended, the routing as "via Kings Cross", to find that the cheapest single fare became £47.00 taking the 10:01 service from Oxford.
So, off to EastCoast.co.uk to buy the ticket.
Unfortunately, East Coast didn't put me on the direct 10:01 service to London, but the later 10:08 changing onto the 10:29 from Didcot, arriving into London at 11:16 for onward circle routing to Kings Cross. This ticket came with advance reservations on the 10:29 from Didcot.
44 minutes is technically perfectly adequate for getting from Paddington to Kings Cross, but I'd prefer a more generous connection.
As far as I can find, however, the main dashboard for East Coast doesn't have the option to allow more time for connections. So try the "Shaw Trust Approved" text only version. It allows me to choose more time - but finds no tickets. Try a few time, but finds no tickets. I guess that there must be down-time on the booking service and wait half an hour.
So half an hour later, go back through the eastcoast text based booking system, choose a longer connetion time, and get myself on the 09:31 service from Oxford to London (no seat reservation), connecting with the 12:00 Highland Chieftan, all for around £44.00. A good price I think.
I didn't do anything odd or peculiar to get the right ticket, no breaking journeys, partial use of tickets, multiple tickets-but I still had to manipulate the system excessively to get a fairly "normal" ticket that should really have been on NRE at the first enquiry and available on the headline dashboard of EastCoast.
