Using Northern Complimentary Travel Pass on a non-permitted route.

[ywalgoch]

Good evening. I wish to travel from Leeds to Denby Dale using one of these passes. As it only allows travel on Northern services, to go at the time I require I would need to go via Barnsley, a journey which National Rail Enquiries informs me is "not a permitted route and may require multiple tickets. Please re-plan your journey". As I am not buying a ticket is this advice irrelevant, or does the restriction apply to these passes also? Thank you.

 

[gray1404]

You can travel between any two points on Northern. There is no need to follow a permitted route.

 

[yorkie]

Good evening. I wish to travel from Leeds to Denby Dale using one of these passes. As it only allows travel on Northern services, to go at the time I require I would need to go via Barnsley, a journey which National Rail Enquiries informs me is "not a permitted route and may require multiple tickets. Please re-plan your journey". As I am not buying a ticket is this advice irrelevant, or does the restriction apply to these passes also? Thank you.

There is no concept of a permitted route for using these tickets.

Indeed, some journeys (such as York to Newcastle) would, by definition, require the journey to be made via non permitted routes.

A few years ago, Northern explained the validity of these tickets by email to me, as follows:

This will allow you a free return journey anywhere on the Northern Network, so long as you travel only on Northern Trains (you'd have to buy a ticket for any non-Northern elements of the journey, if there are any). These don't have an expiry date, and can be used as either as a same-day or open return ticket (up to 30-days after the outbound journey) so long as the dates are entered on the voucher for the outbound journey.

Please access the following link to download an up to date map of all Northern routes: https://www.northernrailway.co.uk/travel/network-map

By utilising a really good planning website called Fast Journey Planner (http://www.fastjp.com/#new?) you can plan a journey to and from anywhere, and more importantly you can select to either use only or exclude certain rail operators, so if you enter your preferred journey, click on 'Transport Operators', select 'Only use Selected Operators' from the menu and then select 'Northern', when you then hit the 'Search for Trains' button it will only find journeys that include Northern trains, and no other, making it easier to plan a trip and make the most out of your vouchers. This will only plot a single journey, to don't forget to plan your return as well.

Incidentally, the website Northern refers to is the website of the supplier who provides the journey planning data to the forum's ticketing site.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Presume the problem with journey planners is that through Leeds to Denby Dale tickets are only ever issued "Route via Huddersfield" (thus meaning that multiple tickets are required to travel on possibly faster end-to-end itineraries via Barnsley Interchange)?

 

[yorkie]

Presume the problem with journey planners is that through Leeds to Denby Dale tickets are only ever issued "Route via Huddersfield" (thus meaning that multiple tickets are required to travel on possibly faster end-to-end itineraries via Barnsley Interchange)?

For this purpose, you simply need to use a JP that just sets a restriction of Northern only.

Using a JP designed for a different purpose will not give meaningful results.

 

[ywalgoch]

That's very helpful... given the officious nature of the some of the Northern staff I've encountered in the past I thought it best to check beforehand. Thanks again.

 

[_toommm_]

I’ve never had any issues doing silly journeys with Northern only-tickets, such as a very long journey of Whitby to Leeds via Newcastle, Carlisle, Barrow, and Preston; or Leeds to Carlisle via Doncaster, Sheffield, Manchester, and Barrow.

A lot of the time they just ask to make sure I know what I’m doing, but when I explain what I’m doing, they’re okay with it.

If the OP wanted a permitted route on a traditional paper ticket of Leeds to Denby Dale using Northern-only, if they travel on Sunday there’s direct Northern Leeds to Huddersfield services, or in the week they could travel via Bradford. The connections are really bad at Huddersfield though and you have to wait an hour for the connection from Bradford for the connection to Denby Dale.

 

[Llandudno]

I’ve never had any issues doing silly journeys with Northern only-tickets, such as a very long journey of Whitby to Leeds via Newcastle, Carlisle, Barrow, and Preston; or Leeds to Carlisle via Doncaster, Sheffield, Manchester, and Barrow.

A lot of the time they just ask to make sure I know what I’m doing, but when I explain what I’m doing, they’re okay with it.

If the OP wanted a permitted route on a traditional paper ticket of Leeds to Denby Dale using Northern-only, if they travel on Sunday there’s direct Northern Leeds to Huddersfield services, or in the week they could travel via Bradford. The connections are really bad at Huddersfield though and you have to wait an hour for the connection from Bradford for the connection to Denby Dale.

A couple of excellent pubs in Huddersfield Station to while away the time though…!