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The National Conditions of Carriage have been extensively rewritten and a new set (now called National Rail Conditions of Travel) take effect from 1st October.

The infamous Paragraph 19 concerning split tickets has been renumbered 14 and the wording changed.

Old version


New Version


From the start of October day rover tickets will allow you to enjoy the same benefits of splitting at a station you pass through, but not call, as you currently can with season tickets and 3, 7 or 14 day rovers/rangers.

The new version can be downloaded from this page: http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/46427.aspx (http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/46427.aspx)

That does seem a sensible change.

Anyone want to check through for other changes?

I've started, but it may take a while....  ;D

(http://www.mbob.co.uk/rforum/ncoc.jpg)

As I initially read it

a) You now can go from one area based ticket to another at a station where the train does not call, whereas in the past only one of those tickets could be a season or zonal ticket.   That's a relaxation

b) If you're making a journey which involves a number (greater than one) of regular journey tickets leading into a zonal ticket, then you're now required to use a train which calls at the stations where you switch from one regular ticket to another.   That's a rule that will put up the price of some journeys or push people making the splits onto fewer services.

Example - Glasgow to Salisbury.   If you had a Freedom of Severn and Solent, you could come from Glasgow with splits at stations like Oxenholme, even if the train did not call there.

c) As I read it, Swindon to Paddington on a train that does NOT call at Didcot remains valid if you but Swindon to Didcot single, Didcot to Cholsey weekly season, Cholsey to Paddington single.   No change.

d) I have never been clear if a change from one ticket to another at a "calls on request" station requires that you have the train stop there. Still unclear though I think you have to ask for a useless stop!

Have the railway folks produced an FAQ guide to explain the differences in the conditions?

That will need testing I suspect by a court. The para definitely says "another ticket", not "ticket(s)" nor "tickets", so refers to a single ticket being combined with a zonal etc ticket. That would rule out your multi-ticket options altogether.

................it's certainly nice to see the system being simplified  ::)

I've had time to take a scan through the new conditions and noticed a few other things that seem to be different too.  I've asked if there's a link to a page highlighting the changes, but been told "sorry I don't have a link for this".  I've also asked whether the old or new conditions apply for period return and other tickets already purchased, but for return journeys made on or after 1st October, and I await an answer.

Don't want to get dramatic here, but there are some things which appear to be significant surprises in both what I would regard and positive and negative for the passenger.    Will post more when I know more!

What does it mean by regular journey ticket?
And what is meant by area based ticket?

It defines area-based ticket in the para above

From my read there are a couple of important changes - one negative, the other positive. Grahame has already pointed out the restriction on multiple 'ordinary' tickets plus a season/ranger to one ordinary and one season. Personally I thought the former interpretation though correct in the reading of the Conditions, was renally extractive in effect.

Another big change is 14.4


This stops one taking a different route with the split ticket combination. I have a season ticket from a local Thames Valley station to London Terminals.  I have in the past bought a day return from my Thames Valley station to Islip and travelled up to Islip on the GW/bus replacement/Chiltern and then travelled direct to Marylebone from Islip as my ticket combination was from Islip to London Terminals (the resulting direct route was actually cheaper than my combo) and I passed nowhere near my TV station - let alone through it! Now each ticket's routing must follow the routing guide so what ever happens, the route is likely to have to be via the splitting station.

Next are season ticket refunds and this was always a huge rip-off by the railway effectively making the value of the ticket nought after eight of its twelve months.


Now the refund value is based on applicable season ticket prices (plus the odd top-up) rather than back calculating the full price of a return journey for each used day when calculating the refund value.  This was so unfair that I am not surprised this clause has now been inserted. Possibly the 'Consumer Rights Act 2015' prompted this major change.

Oh - I'm sure it wasn't what was intended when the old rule was written - and according to one conductor I met it didn't apply on the North Downs line ... where (frankly) I had invoked it by accident, having not realised that the train I was on wasn't calling at Farnborough North.


 ... goodness, I hadn't realised that was allowed in the past; I always took the old rule as meaning you could be on a train that did not stop at the station(s) where you switched.

Looking wider at things I have noticed (and in the absence of a document to tell us what's changed!) ... I wonder about:


No longer (?) any mention of trains that aren't scheduled to have first class on them being automatically declassified.   There's a very interesting diagram that starts with the 07:04 Westbury to Cheltenham Spa - a 2 car unit on hire from SWT that then runs Stroud Valley services all day, with half a carriage being first class accommodation.  Looks like from 3rd October, that will have to have notices attached on a daily basis, the train manager will have to be giving permission all day, or the train will in effect be reduced to 1.5 carriages.


As I recall, that used to be "up to 2 children".   A sensible change, allowing mum to take her newborn triplets.  As children's tickets were from age 5 to 15, under the old system the third triplet required (!) an adult ticket, as adult tickets are valid at any age.


That is an improvement in some ways, as the words "in working order" have been added.   Under the old system, you could (in theory) have been in trouble if there was a non-working TVM - a point which I would have thought far-fetched except we had a significant discussion about it here with someone who's job it was to apply the rules.

I am, though, concerned that the text does NOT say "Ticket machine in working order that can sell you what you require".  At stations without booking offices and with card-only machines, what do you do if you want to pay in cash?   Or if you want to purchase a groupsave?   Reading the rules, looks like you should obtain the conductors's permission to join the train when (s)he's on the platform so that (s)he can sell you the ticket once you get going.


So if a connecting train on an advance ticket fails, you're OK, but if a connecting train on the last off peak service before a peak tie fails, you will be charged the peak fare for the later train you 'fall back' to.  Nice - not!  :'(


So you can turn up with luggage within the prescribe limits, but be denied travel based on how much luggage you have?


I know this isn't new ... but it does remind me that a valid answer to someone asking "can you help me lift my luggage onto the rack" is "no - you're only supposed to bring what you can manage on the train and you're breaking the bylaws!".  No - of course I wouldn't say that ... I don't think ...

Overall, very pedantic here, but these are the sorts of things that we may end up discussing in detail in references to incidents in the future.

And one further question - a few days ago I purchase tickets for outward use this week and with return early next month.  Which conditions apply to the return halves? (Please treat that question as rhetorical ... !)

I don't think there has ever been a condition that automatically allows passengers to use first class accommodation when it is not shown in the timetable, it seems to be one of those things 'generally understood' but I've checked the prior version of the NRCofC and it isn't written down.

That's very interesting, Paul ...  I wondered as I documented some of the things I had noticed (such as the third triplet intact needing an adult ticket) how much they will / were actually be enforced - whether some things are just there as safety nets that can be used if a train operator wants to "throw the book" at someone!

Also noting


That doesn't strike me as a condition on the train operators, but rather a more woolly aspiration.  Or does it mean that as from 1st October, TVMs will be required offer super off peak rather than off peak tickets to London on their front menus at the weekend?

Come 1st October train tickets are falling under the Consumer Rights act; any ambiguous terms will be interpreted in the manner most favourable to the consumer (relevant to the first part of this thread).

There has been a revision of the NRCOT; the new version came into force on Wednesday (4 Dec 2019). The changes are pretty minor - mainly to update references to TOCs, rules and practices, and shifts in PC terminology. There is a list of the changes (https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/NRCoT%20PRO%20Quick%20Reference%20Guide.pdf).

The same page as before on nationalrail.co.uk (https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/46427.aspx) has links to the new text (https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/National%20Rail%20Conditions%20of%20Travel.pdf), and alternative forms, as well as related guidance.

Looking at the summary of changes


That makes sense. The old rules about a ticket being not transferrable from the person for whom it was purchased lead to some interesting (technical to my knowledge) breaches.  Let's say I bought tickets for myself and my wife to travel to Brundall Gardens to see the arboretum, but then the weather was foul and I wanted to take my friend Gareth to see the last of the semaphore signals in the area ... prior to the changes, in theory the ticket would have had to be refunded and re-issued, now it can be transferred.

The new condition in full:


And in summary, a second change:


and that in full

Previously, when services are disrupted, was it not possible to get a train back to your originating station and get a refund?  This situation typically arises when the journey involves changing to a connecting service, and you are effectively left stranded mid-journey.

Also, does the return portion of a ticket count as unused if the outward journey has been made?

By analogy with 5.1.2, presumably a return portion ceases to be unused as soon as the outward journey has been started (or the last day for making it has passed).

The detail - though not the summary - make it clear that "the journey" on a return ticket is the whole round trip.

The NRCoT state your entitlement and there's nothing to stop an operator compensating beyond terms laid down. In the case of "stranded, mid-route" if a return home and abandonment of the journey is the only sensible option, ask nicely and you'll probably get a positive answer.    I can think of a couple of personal Melksham to Weymouth day trips on Sundays that went wrong and had to be abandoned, both documented somewhere back in the archive. On both occasions, I think I was far more concerned for others travelling with me than for the refund, which I don't think I pressed for.   

In both cases onward transport was offered by road, but would have taken so long to gather up and then to travel that it "killed" the day and the pragmatic thing was to abandon - with more thought to not wasting a complete day than getting what's not a lot of money for that trip back.