"TfW & conn" advances from Southampton to the north west of England

[akm]

BRFares tells me that there are various Advance fares from Southampton to Lancaster priced by Transport for Wales and restricted "must include travel on the following main TOC: TRANSPORT FOR WALES RAIL". Some of the prices represent extremely good value for such distances - the lowest tier is just £32! The catch is, I can't seem to find any itinerary at all, looking at various times of day and days of the week, all the way to the Advance booking horizon.

What's the intended route for these fares, I wonder? They are described in the brfares db as "AP GWR/TFW &CONN" so it would seem you're supposed to get the GWR northwestwards to Bristol and then Newport, and then... TFW north to Hereford / Shrewsbury / Chester / Crewe and then make connections onwards? fastjp.com can produce services for such a journey, but (for me) trying to force a non-split journey on trainsplit (both vanilla and forum site) with appropriate via points produces either an itinerary that doesn't use one of these Advances, or a metaphorical "search me guv" error (intermittently, interspersed with a non-error "these journeys aren't yet open for booking" result).

Can anyone get offered one of these fares?

I note that these aren't any such fares for stations near Southampton but not on the GWR service's line of route; and at the other end, Wigan, Preston, Lancaster have such a fare, but nowhere beyond Lancaster on the WCML. All very mysterious.




I don't have any actual trip planned here, so particular dates aren't relevant

 

[Tazi Hupefi]

BRFares tells me that there are various Advance fares from Southampton to Lancaster priced by Transport for Wales and restricted "must include travel on the following main TOC: TRANSPORT FOR WALES RAIL". Some of the prices represent extremely good value for such distances - the lowest tier is just £32! The catch is, I can't seem to find any itinerary at all, looking at various times of day and days of the week, all the way to the Advance booking horizon.

What's the intended route for these fares, I wonder? They are described in the brfares db as "AP GWR/TFW &CONN" so it would seem you're supposed to get the GWR northwestwards to Bristol and then Newport, and then... TFW north to Hereford / Shrewsbury / Chester / Crewe and then make connections onwards? fastjp.com can produce services for such a journey, but (for me) trying to force a non-split journey on trainsplit (both vanilla and forum site) with appropriate via points produces either an itinerary that doesn't use one of these Advances, or a metaphorical "search me guv" error (intermittently, interspersed with a non-error "these journeys aren't yet open for booking" result).

Can anyone get offered one of these fares?

I note that these aren't any such fares for stations near Southampton but not on the GWR service's line of route; and at the other end, Wigan, Preston, Lancaster have such a fare, but nowhere beyond Lancaster on the WCML. All very mysterious.




I don't have any actual trip planned here, so particular dates aren't relevant

If I remember correctly, when these were set up, they were supposed to primarily connect onto TPE services (not Avanti etc) via Manchester with Transport for Wales, but TPE provide extremely limited onward availability on their legs for these ticket types, sometimes none at all.

Sometimes you can't even get an itinerary to appear as via Manchester isn't a permitted route depending on where you come from.

I don't think they have any availability via Crewe/Warrington on Avanti etc.

Some of these fares may predate TPE having the Scottish services, hence the limited destinations in the North of England.

You need to try and do something like:

South West of England - Newport - Manchester - Preston

Possibly could get it to do something on the handful of GWR services to Hereford and then on to Manchester with TfW that way instead.

Using only GWR, TfW and TPE.

 

[jawr256]

Using only GWR, TfW and TPE.

Using Northern between Manchester and Preston has also worked for me on similarly routed fares between Preston and the South West.

 

[Gathursty]

Are you allowed to go Southampton - Newport - Gloucester - Birmingham - Lancaster and just use TfW Newport - Gloucester instead of going through the Marches?

 

[JonathanH]

Are you allowed to go Southampton - Newport - Gloucester - Birmingham - Lancaster and just use TfW Newport - Gloucester instead of going through the Marches?

The route is at the whim of what journey planners will allow. The above routeing doesn't make TfW the primary operator for the journey so doesn't bring up the relevant advance fares.

BRFares says (my bold) "Journey must include travel on the following main TOC: TRANSPORT FOR WALES RAIL"

 

[JB_B]

Are you allowed to go Southampton - Newport - Gloucester - Birmingham - Lancaster and just use TfW Newport - Gloucester instead of going through the Marches?

I don't think so - none of the permitted routes go via Newport.

The route is at the whim of what journey planners will allow. The above routeing doesn't make TfW the primary operator for the journey so doesn't bring up the relevant advance fares.

BRFares says (my bold) "Journey must include travel on the following main TOC: TRANSPORT FOR WALES RAIL"

I don't think planners implement any concept of main TOC - as far as I know they just check that at least one leg meets the constraint. ( Happy to be corrected.)

 

[Starmill]

Are you allowed to go Southampton - Newport - Gloucester - Birmingham - Lancaster and just use TfW Newport - Gloucester instead of going through the Marches?

I think you wouldn't find the availability on CrossCountry services.

 

[JonathanH]

I don't think so - none of the permitted routes go via Newport.

Yes, that essentially makes the tickets impossible to buy.

Does anyone know when the route ceased to be permitted? My 2000 fares manual has tickets routed AP W&B / WE Trains. At that point there was a daily through train from Portsmouth to Liverpool via the Marches line, lopped off a Portsmouth to Cardiff train at Newport, which was a clever way of providing peak capacity at Bristol and a through service from the Marches to Liverpool.

 

[Starmill]

I don't think planners implement any concept of main TOC - as far as I know they just check that at least one leg meets the constraint. ( Happy to be corrected.)

Indeed. If it can find the quota availability and the conditions are met it will retail the ticket. Unfortunately the relevant quotas generally won't be set for the combinations suggested. The OP may have more luck searching for Advance ticket availability from Newport to their destination in the North West, and then combining that with a ticket from Southampton Central to Newport. This would come to a similar price as the through option. The cheapest through fare would be almost impossible to get quota for even if the appropriate route were mapped.

 

[JB_B]

In the background, the data behind 00478 AP GWR/TFW &CONN requires the journey to exclude all of these locations:-


BDM Bedford
GLD Guildford
HON Honiton
HWY High Wycombe
KPA Kensington Olympia
SLO Slough
WFJ Watford Junction
WIJ Willesden Junction



None of the permitted routes from Southampton to Lancaster pass through Newport ( nor Shrewsbury nor Hereford) but I think you could get the TfW leg in on the Crewe-Manchester segment.

Southampton-Bristol-Birmingham-Crewe-Manchester-Lancaster is a permitted route ( mapped on BW+BX )

Of course, in any case, there may be no quota.

 

[Tazi Hupefi]

Birmingham is out of the question. Zero availability on CrossCountry with this ticket.

Try via Hereford on the handful of direct GWR services if not valid via Newport, otherwise it will be at the discretion of the TfW Pricing Manager if they wish to insert some easements into the Routeing Guide for this route code....

Ultimately you need to find your way onto a reserveable TfW service along the Marches.

ATW/TfW did start a project to add quite a few VIA HEREFORD fares for NW-SW journeys in recent years, so they're probably not against the above tweak in principle. For example, Chester to Penzance via Hereford.

Look up fares for any train journey in Britain

Full details of all British rail Single, Return & Season tickets and Travelcards. Built-in Season Ticket Calculator.

www.brfares.com

 

[JB_B]

I can find quite a few examples of the NDA equivalent on trainsplit at £51.20 ( that's 3 price points up but otherwise identical so presumably the problem with the £32.00 NAA is that there's little or no quota.)

Via Bristol, Birmingham New Street
Change at Crewe *
Via Manchester

* adding extra change time at Crewe as required to hit the TfW.

 

[Tazi Hupefi]

I can find quite a few examples of the NDA equivalent on trainsplit at £51.20 ( that's 3 price points up but otherwise identical so presumably the problem with the £32.00 NAA is that there's little or no quota.)

Via Bristol, Birmingham New Street
Change at Crewe *
Via Manchester

* adding extra change time at Crewe as required to hit the TfW.

There shouldn't be any quota on XC for any of these tiers as far as I am aware (largely ruling out travel via Birmingham)- what's the itinerary? Is it connecting on to a West Midlands Train somewhere odd like Leamington Spa or Worcester?

 

[JonathanH]

I've got £38.40, ie the second cheapest tier) using the forum's booking engine for a journey on 27 September, specifying 'cheap', excluding CrossCountry and Avanti West Coast, specifying a stop at Ashchurch, a change at Crewe and a stop at Manchester Piccadilly.

Itinerary is

1011 Southampton Central to Bristol Temple Meads 1152
1238 Bristol Temple Meads to Worcester Foregate Street 1416
1440 Worcester Foregate Street to Smethwick Galton Bridge 1536
1550 Smethwick Galton Bridge to Wolverhampton 1607
1626 Wolverhampton to Crewe 1725
1830 Crewe to Manchester Piccadilly 1915
1950 Manchester Piccadilly to Lancaster 2050

Whether an all day journey is worth the saving is up to the traveller.

0533 to 1550 is also possible.

 

[yorkie]

Clearly this route should be valid via Newport; the Routeing guide is too restrictive in this case, thus rendering it extremely difficult to obtain a valid itinerary for these particular fares.

Good work from @JonathanH in actually generating an itinerary!

 

[OrangeJuice]

Clearly this route should be valid via Newport; the Routeing guide is too restrictive in this case, thus rendering it extremely difficult to obtain a valid itinerary for these particular fares.

Good work from @JonathanH in actually generating an itinerary!

Southampton or Salisbury to Cheshire (I presume north west too) is valid via London, Banbury or Bristol, but not Newport/Hereford which is rather odd/annoying.

I don't know why you would travel to Bristol and then back to Birmingham when one change at Newport is available!

 

[yorkie]

Hopefully the relevant people at Rail Delivery Group will see this thread and enable the route via Newport, which is surely intended to be valid.

 

[Envoy]

Surely Liverpool via The Marches should be available from southern England once TfW start the direct services from Cardiff to Liverpool?

 

[Tazi Hupefi]

Hopefully via Newport becomes a permitted route, especially now TfW seem to be running comfortable, Intercity style rolling stock on this route. Should be an effective way to poach customers from CrossCountry too.

 

[317 forever]

My parents lived just outside Southampton. I tended to use Cross Country from Stockport or go via London. Had their been a cheaper return with TfW and GWR via Newport (or predecessors to those TOCs) I might sometimes have gone that way.