Newcastle to Guildford direct service

[infobleep]

Does any one know why the Sunday service from Newcastle to Guildford, only starts after 17th September? I would have thought services that run once a day would be more popular in the summer than the autumn.

It means I can get a cheap advanced single to Oxford from Guildford on the Saturday, i.e. tomorrow, but not an advanced single to get me back on the Sunday, unless I am travelling after 17 September, in which case I can!

Of course I'm travelling back this Sunday so it's not use to me.

Is it common for some services not to run in the summer?

Kind regards

 

[yorkie]

I'm struggling to understand the question.

Are you stating that a Newcastle to Guildford direct train does operate on Sundays commencing 18 September, but is not running before that date? I can't find one on Sunday 18 September or Sunday 25 September. I had no idea what time to look for one, but WebTIS only gives me itineraries involving changes and claims there are no direct trains.

 

[infobleep]

Hi Yokie

I'm looking at page 52 of Cross Countries timetable booklet.

http://www.crosscountrytrains.co.uk...to_Manchester_the_North_East_and_Scotland.pdf

Hj is the code above the service and in the notes it states starting from 17th September.

I didn't check the real time planner in this case because I'm not actually travelling on the 17th. I checked the booklet to see if the service had been consigned to the history books. According to the booklet it hasn't been but it only starts from the 17th September.

I've had this issue before when coming back from visiting a friend in York. The direct service I believe stopped running something like the week before I wished to travel, again I was travelling on a Sunday and I could see no engineering works reason why it would stop running.

 

[sonic2009]

The Reason it may start again after this date is due to the engineering works that have been taking place between Reading and Wokingham for the past couple of Weeks.

 

[Lrd]

I can only see one direct service to Guildford on a Sunday in that timetable, which is the 1735 Newcastle to Reading, that is extended to Guildford after 17 September. However I cannot find it on NRE or the XC website. Perhaps you should email XC to find out what is going on?

 

[sonic2009]

Looking like this :

Starts from York at 1834 18th Sept Direct to Guildford

Then looking like engineering works between Banbury and Oxford for next few weekends, I would contact XC to see what is going on.

 

[infobleep]

Thanks for your replies. I did contact XC sales department some years ago via e-mail and the reply I got was along the lines of I need to contact the train company involved. To which I replies, you are the train company involved.

After my recent experience of contacting TFL; Southern and South West Trains, over the overcrowding on platform 16 during the London overground track doubling at Clapham Junction, I thought may be I'd get a better response on here from people who might just happen to know because of their job etc. In the Clapham Junction incident, I got replies after the work had been completed. This suggested they wished to ignore the matter and not deal with it.

Back to the direct train. Your right about the engineering works. I had forgotten about those. However I would have thought advanced singles would be sold even when engineering works are taking place but I don't actually know if that is the case and even if it is, it probably isn't in some cases.

 

[Paul Kelly]

The Guildford to Oxford advance fares are routed XC ONLY, so you can only buy them if the entire journey from Guildford to Oxford is made on an XC train. If XC trains aren't running between Reading and Guildford on a given day (because of adjustments to the timetable oweing to engineering works somewhere) then it will simply be impossible to buy these fares.

 

[swt_passenger]

The reason it may start again after this date is due to the engineering works that have been taking place between Reading and Wokingham for the past couple of weeks.

To expand on that, the engineering work on the Southern lines has been running nearly every week of the current timetable so far - and back in May was planned to last until later in September, which is why there is no earlier dated service at all.

Progress so far means there is now no closure this weekend and next, they are slightly ahead of plan...

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However I would have thought advanced singles would be sold even when engineering works are taking place but I don't actually know if that is the case and even if it is, it probably isn't in some cases.

The general idea is that Advance fare availability is directly governed by the engineering works programme, which explains the theoretical 12 weeks cut off beyond which Advance fares are not sold.

In this particular case though, the service is a 'dated service' in the published timetable, as you have already realised, so until Sep 18th it just does not exist - so this means there is no need for XC to bustitute it, and no fares would be available at all.

Again, in general terms, if a service is cancelled on the odd weekend and remains in the published timetable, it probably will be bustituted - or formal arrangements made for passengers to use a different TOC's services, but even then they might remove Advance fares from sale.