What routes are valid within 'London Group' with a Basingstoke to London Terminals season ticket

[rwuk]

Having renewed my annual season ticket this year I've opted for the Basingstoke to London Terminals (Any Permitted) ticket, albeit loaded onto an SWR smart card. When looking at the prices with the NRE Season Ticket Calculator I noted that it states that:

With this ticket, using National Rail services you can travel to / from the following London stations: London Bridge [LBG], London Victoria [VIC], London Charing Cross [CHX], London Paddington [PAD], London Cannon Street [CST], London Waterloo East [WAE], City Thameslink [CTK], London Waterloo [WAT], London Blackfriars [BFR]​

What I don't know is what the valid routes are to get to those stations, or how to work them out. Having had a read on the forum previously, and a bit of a refresh now, I think that my understanding (which could be entirely wrong) is that I can take routes that can be traced on map combinations BU+WX, LE, PZ or PZ+WX. That's fine and dandy, but they all ultimately point at 'London Group' as the 'terminal node' and I can't find, or have missed, how to deal with that "bit".

Looking at the simplest map to work with (LE - London to Penzance via Salisbury) that gives Basingstoke > ... ... > Clapham Junction > LONDON GROUP. I can reason that a train from Clapham Junction to Victoria or to Waterloo is covered here as they are direct from the station. The others though are,... less obvious?

Or - it may be the information provided by the Season Ticket Calculator is incorrect?

 

[alistairlees]

The info is correct

travel to Paddington via Reading
Travel to Charing Cross, or London Bridge by going to Waterloo then walking to Waterloo East
Travel to Cannon Street, Blackfriars it City Thameslink by going via London Bridge, having first gone to London Bridge via Waterloo / Waterloo East

You are not allowed to travel on London Underground.

 

[swt_passenger]

Basically you can either go:
Basingstoke via Reading to Paddington
Basingstoke via Woking and Clapham Jn to any of Victoria, Vauxhall, Waterloo, Waterloo East, Charing Cross, London Bridge, and once at London Bridge you can go to Blackfriars, City Thameslink or Cannon St. The barriers at Waterloo will allow you through to continue your journey via Waterloo East, but I think validity at Waterloo East is pretty much academic, it doesn’t really provide a useful separate destination to Waterloo....
I’ve never been clear on whether you can use the Reading to Waterloo route as well though. I’m sure someone else will have an opinion.

 

[Jona26]

The info is correct

travel to Paddington via Reading
Travel to Charing Cross, or London Bridge by going to Waterloo then walking to Waterloo East
Travel to Cannon Street, Blackfriars it City Thameslink by going via London Bridge, having first gone to London Bridge via Waterloo / Waterloo East

You are not allowed to travel on London Underground.

Although the ticket is certainly valid to those stations as it is on a SWR smart card would it be accepted at the non-SWR terminals via the gate readers?

The map on the SWR website suggests otherwise.

https://www.southwesternrailway.com/train-tickets/smart-ticketing/touch-smartcard/using-a-smartcard

Edit: added link

 

[rwuk]

Basically you can either go:
Basingstoke via Reading to Paddington
Basingstoke via Woking and Clapham Jn to any of Victoria, Vauxhall, Waterloo, Waterloo East, Charing Cross, London Bridge, and once at London Bridge you can go to Blackfriars, City Thameslink or Cannon St. The barriers at Waterloo will allow you through to continue your journey via Waterloo East, but I think validity at Waterloo East is pretty much academic, it doesn’t really provide a useful separate destination to Waterloo....
I’ve never been clear on whether you can use the Reading to Waterloo route as well though. I’m sure someone else will have an opinion.

If I've understood things correctly, the map combination PZ+WX implies that Reading to Waterloo is valid as, for the relevant parts:

• PZ: Basingstoke > Reading > ... > LONDON GROUP
• WX: Reading > ... > Clapham Junction > LONDON GROUP

If the intention of this map combination was to provide anything other than a journey of BSK > RDG > WAT, I'm not sure what said intention is - again assuming I've understood the maps correctly (I'm using the ones at http://data.atoc.org/routeing-maps FWIW). If it wasn't permitted It'd just be map PZ, surely?

All that said, and whilst the explanations regarding how to get to the London stations listed given by you and alistairlees make absolute sense... Is this actually documented anywhere as it all seems fairly explicit until you get to 'London Group'?

 

[swt_passenger]

If I've understood things correctly, the map combination PZ+WX implies that Reading to Waterloo is valid as, for the relevant parts:

• PZ: Basingstoke > Reading > ... > LONDON GROUP
• WX: Reading > ... > Clapham Junction > LONDON GROUP

If the intention of this map combination was to provide anything other than a journey of BSK > RDG > WAT, I'm not sure what said intention is - again assuming I've understood the maps correctly (I'm using the ones at http://data.atoc.org/routeing-maps FWIW). If it wasn't permitted It'd just be map PZ, surely?

All that said, and whilst the explanations regarding how to get to the London stations listed given by you and alistairlees make absolute sense... Is this actually documented anywhere as it all seems fairly explicit until you get to 'London Group'?

I think it’s only documented publicly in the way you’ve already found it...

 

[Wallsendmag]

Although the ticket is certainly valid to those stations as it is on a SWR smart card would it be accepted at the non-SWR terminals via the gate readers?

The map on the SWR website suggests otherwise.

https://www.southwesternrailway.com/train-tickets/smart-ticketing/touch-smartcard/using-a-smartcard

Edit: added link

LNER Smartcards work the ScotRail gates in Edinburgh

 

[JB_B]

The info is correct

travel to Paddington via Reading
Travel to Charing Cross, or London Bridge by going to Waterloo then walking to Waterloo East
Travel to Cannon Street, Blackfriars it City Thameslink by going via London Bridge, having first gone to London Bridge via Waterloo / Waterloo East

You are not allowed to travel on London Underground.

I'm guessing that there must be rule or rules that stop you continuing north from City Thameslink to Farringdon and St Pancras ( journey planners won't offer these destinations but do offer City Thameslink from the south as expected.) Where is that rule documented?

 

[Kite159]

Basically you can either go:
Basingstoke via Reading to Paddington
Basingstoke via Woking and Clapham Jn to any of Victoria, Vauxhall, Waterloo, Waterloo East, Charing Cross, London Bridge, and once at London Bridge you can go to Blackfriars, City Thameslink or Cannon St. The barriers at Waterloo will allow you through to continue your journey via Waterloo East, but I think validity at Waterloo East is pretty much academic, it doesn’t really provide a useful separate destination to Waterloo....
I’ve never been clear on whether you can use the Reading to Waterloo route as well though. I’m sure someone else will have an opinion.

I believe you can go Basingstoke - Reading - Ascot - Staines - Waterloo via maps "PZ+WX"

 

[Hadders]

I'm guessing that there must be rule or rules that stop you continuing north from City Thameslink to Farringdon and St Pancras ( journey planners won't offer these destinations but do offer City Thameslink from the south as expected.) Where is that rule documented?

Farringdon is not a London Terminal so a ticket issued to or from London Terminals is not valid there. If you want to pass through Farringdon to get elsewhere (e.g. St Pancras) then you need a ticket that is valid through Farringdon.

 

[Lewlew]

I have a SWR smart card with a Basingstoke to London annual season on it and it works the barriers at Reading and Paddington. Not tested it at other intermediate stations yet.

Guards on GWR and XC are also able to scan it and check you have a valid ticket.

 

[yorkie]

Although the ticket is certainly valid to those stations as it is on a SWR smart card would it be accepted at the non-SWR terminals via the gate readers?

The map on the SWR website suggests otherwise.

https://www.southwesternrailway.com/train-tickets/smart-ticketing/touch-smartcard/using-a-smartcard

Edit: added link

To quote Roger Ford of Modern Railways in October 2005:

"What counts is the message, not the medium."

"So, the message is that if you roll up at a station with an Oyster travel card you are entitled to pay the boundary excess. If your friendly local TOC (and I must try this one the team at Welwyn Garden City) wants proof of the validity of the Travelcard it is up to the managers to provide the ticket office staff with readers" -

This sill holds true today

 

[JB_B]

Farringdon is not a London Terminal so a ticket issued to or from London Terminals is not valid there. If you want to pass through Farringdon to get elsewhere (e.g. St Pancras) then you need a ticket that is valid through Farringdon.

Of course - thanks - how did I miss that?

 

[IainH]

I raised this same question in a thread a while ago, here, https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/basingstoke-to-london-routes.190694/#post-4185012 and we came to the conclusion that Blackfriars (and therefore City Thameslink but not Farringdon) was valid via London Bridge and also, by virtue of the three mile rule, via Denmark Hill or Tooting. This didn't factor in use of a smart card but as highlighted above this should not matter. Have had no problems breaking my journey on the Reading-Ascot-Waterloo line on a paper Basingstoke - London season.

 

[mmh]

Farringdon is not a London Terminal so a ticket issued to or from London Terminals is not valid there. If you want to pass through Farringdon to get elsewhere (e.g. St Pancras) then you need a ticket that is valid through Farringdon.

St Pancras is however a London Terminal, so there must be some data listing which Terminals are valid from where in which direction, which can't be as simple as "the first you come to and no further" else Vauxhall, London Bridge, Waterloo East and Blackfriars would mess things up from the south.

 

[Hadders]

Here's what National Rail says:

https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/ticket_types/46587.aspx#terminals

'London Terminal' stations
Tickets issued for travel to/from London usually show 'London Terminals' as the destination/origin rather than naming a specific station. This is because the ticket is valid to more than one London Terminal station provided it’s on any reasonable line of route. Tickets can only be used on National Rail services.

For example, a ticket from Woking to London Terminals is valid to:

• London Waterloo
• London Victoria (via Clapham Junction)
• London Bridge
• London Blackfriars
• City Thameslink
• London Charing Cross
• London Waterloo East
• London Cannon Street (via London Bridge)

It would not be valid to, for example, London Euston or Paddington as this would not be on the line of route and would involve crossing London using another mode of transport, such as the London Underground or London Buses.

 

[mmh]

Thameslink of course makes that explanation flawed, as does its use of "reasonable route."

The actual data to determine it must exist for journey planners to use.

 

[IainH]

Yes, agree the data must be somewhere.....On the other thread we explored Basingstoke - Euston, and the reason it was not valid from Clapham Junction or Richmond via Willesden on a Basingstoke-London season is that Willesden is a routing point. Kind of fair enough, but given the poor quality of the routing guide maps there is no way you can work that out easily, and that Willesden is a routing point is not clear from the maps that are relevant to this journey. St Pancras would fail for the same reason.

 

[ForTheLoveOf]

I think the only data source that (attempts to) comprehensively define valid London Terminals is the file provided on the RDG's website at http://data.atoc.org/london-terminals. This does, however, require you to sign up for a free account and to agree to certain terms and conditions - something which I think it would be difficult to say is permissible merely to determine the rights one is being given. In any case it is not presented in a format readily readable by consumers, and isn't even accurate in some cases.

In the absence of freely available information that accurately defines the validity of London Terminals tickets in a way readable by consumers, beyond the Routeing Guide with its somewhat unhelpful "London Group" blob, I think the rail industry would struggle to justify penalising a passenger who did travel to St Pancras via City Thameslink from the south with a London Terminals ticket.

Of course, that is only in a legal sense - in a practical sense the law doesn't really matter because the rail industry takes nowhere near sufficient measures to ensure that customers' legal rights are upheld and respected, and very few people would be willing to take it to Court.

NRE is not a reliable source of information for definitively determining the limits of validity - it refuses to show quite a number of valid routes (due to the constraints imposed by having to use often inaccurate industry data). So though this is relatively readily accessible I don't think it can be relied upon.

 

[Jona26]

To quote Roger Ford of Modern Railways in October 2005:


This sill holds true today

Absoloutely agree. I maybe should have phrased my question better - perhaps along the line of would the OP encounter any difficulties on non-SWR services and why does the SWR map suggest it's only valid on their services?

 

[mmh]

Absoloutely agree. I maybe should have phrased my question better - perhaps along the line of would the OP encounter any difficulties on non-SWR services and why does the SWR map suggest it's only valid on their services?

If I had a season ticket and was planning on using it for intermediate journeys I'd certainly want it on a paper ticket so it can be visually read.

 

[cactustwirly]

Basically you can either go:
Basingstoke via Reading to Paddington
Basingstoke via Woking and Clapham Jn to any of Victoria, Vauxhall, Waterloo, Waterloo East, Charing Cross, London Bridge, and once at London Bridge you can go to Blackfriars, City Thameslink or Cannon St. The barriers at Waterloo will allow you through to continue your journey via Waterloo East, but I think validity at Waterloo East is pretty much academic, it doesn’t really provide a useful separate destination to Waterloo....
I’ve never been clear on whether you can use the Reading to Waterloo route as well though. I’m sure someone else will have an opinion.

Not sure why you would want to travel from Reading to Waterloo, unless you want to travel to somewhere like Ascot.

 

[JB_B]

I think the only data source that (attempts to) comprehensively define valid London Terminals is the file provided on the RDG's website at http://data.atoc.org/london-terminals. This does, however, require you to sign up for a free account and to agree to certain terms and conditions - something which I think it would be difficult to say is permissible merely to determine the rights one is being given. In any case it is not presented in a format readily readable by consumers, and isn't even accurate in some cases.
...

I don't think the London Terminals Mapping (LTM) feed can be the source. Certainly it plays no role in the route validation rules applied by journey planners. ( If it did play a role you'd have seem some very odd results because , as you probably know, even fairly recently it's been full of errors - including at one point having no LT defined for many stations. )

I would guess that journey planner developers are imputing additional (undocumented) rules to exclude St Pancras as a valid destination.

 

[Hadders]

I don't think the London Terminals Mapping (LTM) feed can be the source. Certainly it plays no role in the route validation rules applied by journey planners. ( If it did play a role you'd have seem some very odd results because , as you probably know, even fairly recently it's been full of errors - including at one point having no LT defined for many stations. )

I would guess that journey planner developers are imputing additional (undocumented) rules to exclude St Pancras as a valid destination.

St Pancras is not an appropriate London Terminal from the south. As I said upthread Farringdon is not a London Terminal. You cannot therefore pass through Farringdon (in either direction) with a ticket to/from London Terminals (there is an easement for tickets routed 'Plus Speed' but that's not relevant for the purposes of this discussion.

Another way of thinking about it is once you reach your first London Terminal you have reached your destination. You can continue to another London Terminal so long as you don't pass through a station that isn't a London Terminal.

Consider a Stevenage - London Terminals ticket travelling on the Northern City Line towards Moorgate. When I get to Old Street I have reached a London Terminal but I can continue to Moorgate as it is also a London Terminal and I don't pass through another station that isn't a London Terminal.

The same Stevenage - London Terminals ticket can be used to St Pancras on Thameslink services. The train continues through Farringdon to City Thameslink, Blackfriars and London Bridge. I cannot use the ticket to travel to travel beyond St Pancras because it's not valid at Farringdon, as it is not a London Terminal.

The same principles apply south of London. Vauxhall is a London Terminal but you can carry on to Waterloo as you don't travel through another station that isn't a London Terminal. At Waterloo you can interchange to Waterloo East and continue to Charing Cross or London Bridge. If you do so you don't pass through a station that isn't a London Terminal so this is ok. From London Bridge you can reach Cannon Street, Blackfriars and City Thameslink, again this is ok as you don't pass through a non-London Terminal station. If you go beyond City Thameslink you get to Farringdon which isn't a London Terminal so isn't allowed.

 

[furlong]

Farringdon is not a London Terminal so a ticket issued to or from London Terminals is not valid there.

Unfortunately it remains a grey area. You could choose St. Pancras as your destination and your ticket would say on it London Terminals. The Routeing Guide maps would give you no route to get there from the south (because the maps only show London Group once - not London Group<->Farringdon<->London Group - so only some stations in London Group are reachable on the maps you use) but your ticket might still be valid at Farringdon if you are travelling on the shortest route between your origin and St. Pancras.

 

[alistairlees]

The London terminals feed (as it used to be called - I think it’s now called group stations feed) is not, and should not be, used by journey planners to determine route validity for a ticket. As Hadders has said, the routeing guide should be used.

The group stations feed is intended to be used by online journey planners to provide a list of valid stations (in this case, London Terminals stations) for the ticket / route code combination. This is intended to assist passengers in understanding the validity of different tickets. As some have observed, this has sometimes been incorrect, in that perfectly valid London Terminals have been omitted. As a result it has (in the past) been possible to plan a journey from Bradford to St Pancras, and then hover on the ticket type (such as an anytime return route any permitted), only to be informed that the only London Terminal it was valid to was, in fact, London Kings Cross (this is an actual example from a couple of years ago).

 

[Hadders]

I agree that the maps are a nightmare. It was much clearer when they used PDF maps.

It will be interesting to see what happens when Crossrail opens. Will we get 'London Elizabeth' to rival 'London Thameslink'.

 

[IainH]

Another way of thinking about it is once you reach your first London Terminal you have reached your destination. You can continue to another London Terminal so long as you don't pass through a station that isn't a London Terminal.

Not always the case, though? If you travel Basingstoke - Clapham Junction - Willesden Junction - Euston the first London Terminal you come to is Euston. And as mentioned above it is Willesden as a routing point that prevents that route being valid.

 

[Lewlew]

Absoloutely agree. I maybe should have phrased my question better - perhaps along the line of would the OP encounter any difficulties on non-SWR services and why does the SWR map suggest it's only valid on their services?

I don't get any problems using my SWR smart card on XC/GWR. If they are too lazy to scan the card they just read the gold record card

 

[JB_B]

The London terminals feed (as it used to be called - I think it’s now called group stations feed)....

It's still London Terminals and LondonTerminalsMappingData in the free feed ltm*.xml - it's going be very confusing if they start calling it "group stations".