OFF PEAK Euston/Preston/Lancaster

[celdor]

There seem a huge discrepancy in the availability of Off Peak trains between
Euston and Preston and Euston and Lancaster. Preston - Lancaster 18 Minutes.

The Off peak ticket Euston - Preston is NOT valid for travel on any train departing London Euston between 1501 and 1844 whereas Euston-Lancaster ie on the same trains {18 mins longer journey )has no afternoon restrictions.

Can anyone explain why.

 

[yorkie]

Only Virgin can really explain why. It's a policy decision that they have made.

They know that rail is less competitive compared to air, the further North you go. They have no evening restrictions when going to anywhere north of, and including Lancaster.

If they had evening peak restrictions for Glasgow, people would go by plane.

However they know that from Preston, the service is good enough some people will pay £271 for an SOR. So they charge it!

If complaints are made to Virgin that Lancaster is too good a deal, then one option is to move the boundary of the unrestricted-in-the-afternoon tickets to Carlisle, or Lockerbie...

 

[rail-britain]

This is a historic pricing policy, hence the discrepancy
The fares structure splits at Preston (North / South)
The other fares structure splits at Rugby (North / South)

Northbound, the split is at Preston as many passengers travel to/from here

In general the off peak return cannot be applied on "long distance" journeys
Due to the revised WCML timetable this now means that Euston - Preston is the shortest direct journey possible on this table (16:30 Euston - Glasgow and 13:53 / 15:53 Glasgow - Euston)