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I am travelling up to the Midlands on Friday evening and back on Saturday. 

For Melksham to Bromsgrove, I would normally use the Off Peak return ticket and, travelling via Yate, have a decent service available changing at either Chippenham or Trowbridge, Bristol Temple Meads and Birmingham New Street.

On my return on Saturday, the line through Yate is closed - train diverted via Swindon.  My outward journey makes use of easement 700351, which allows the double back at Birmingham New Street.  Question - would my ticket on Saturday be valid from Bromsgrove via Birmingham and Swindon (where the diverted trains call), or would I need to travel from Bromsgrove via Worcester to Cheltenham Spa to pick up the Cross Country train?

More generally asked ... what happens to easements when there are engineering changes?

If only Willie Rushton were still with us, we could ask him...

(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/MORNINGTON_CRESCENT-03_230612_CPS_%287567936326%29.jpg)
Image: Chris Sampson [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]

Not a definitive answer, but applying some logic to the situation (which might not be the best way to start with railway fare structures, but we'll leave that hanging for a moment...)

Easement 700351 actually says:

"Customers travelling via Yate to Bromsgrove in possession of tickets routed "Any
Permitted" may double back via Birmingham New Street. This easement applies in both
directions."

The intention of the easement is clearly to allow people whose express trains to or from the south that do not call at Bromsgrove to go to and from New Street and change there. It would clearly not be the intention of the easement to allow people who are travelling via Worcester to go to Birmingham and travel back, because their return train would also call at Bromsgrove.

Yate is used as the routeing point because that is the way that XC express trains normally go between Bristol and Birmingham. The use of any other routeing point eg. Bristol Parkway or Gloucester would introduce ambiguity into the matter because possible alternative routes would then be available.

So now we introduce the concept of engineering work closing the Midland main line. XC trains are diverted from via Yate to via Swindon. They are still the XC express trains that the easement is intended to cover, diverted only because of engineering work. I would say that the existence of that engineering work makes no difference to any easement available between Bromsgrove and Birmingham.

It has always been commonplace to route tickets via a mid-point on particular lines to make it abundantly clear which route is the valid one. In the olden days that easement may well have said "via Mangotsfield." If the train you were on was one of the few that were booked to join the GWR line at Westerleigh, so you ended up going via Stoke Gifford, would you have found yourself on the wrong side of a TTI's gaze? Certainly not.

To be strictly pedantic, I think the only time that you may fall foul of any eaasement or routeinng restriction on this journey would be if you decided to change at Swindon on the way home rather than Bath or Bristol. That is simply because the easement implies that the train will run via Yate, so you shouldn't actually be on the platform at Swindon in the first place, let alone catch a train to Melksham from there. However, the likelihood of you being picked up by a GWR Train Manager for doing just that would, I suspect, be unlikely in the extreme. He or she probably wouldn't know about the easement anyway, and a ticket from Bromsgrove to Swindon via any permitted route would be valid for a change there.

Your logic is - err - logical, Robin. Sadly this is the world of train fares which sometimes defy logic, and different people in the business will give different answer to the same question.

After posting, I checked for the official view via a phone call to National Rail enquiries and cutting short a (very) long conversation and several periods spent on hold, has informed me that Cross Country have not updated the easement for the engineering works, and with the train between Birmingham and Bristol not going through Yate, the easement cannot be used. When I suggest this seemed a bit off (I really didn't want to go a more expensive route - but the normal one is closed) he suggested I call Cross Country ... who (again after being put on hold by their agent while he consulted) suggested I would be OK, and if challenged by the train manager refer him back to Cross Country customer services.  Working on the basis that I am taking the best reasonable route around the engineering, it will be OK and the easement can be used.

Simples

The simple answer has to be that an engineering diversion shouldn't cost you more.

I'd buy the intended ticket without hesitation. If a later attempt was made to extract more money from me I'd (metaphorically) scream blue murder.

I totally agree.  However, I could point you back at previous situations where "shouldn't" has not meant "won't".

With the go ahead of the train operator concerned to follow your principle, checked with his duty manager and looking at my specific plans, I will be doing as you suggest.

I also agree with Mac but the whole issue needs looking at again whilst standing well back.

I was intrigued, but not surprised, by the answers you got from NRE and XC and also how they differed. One explanation might be that NRE, not of course in the business of actually running trains, were covering their backsides with a modus operandi of "if there's doubt then err on the side of caution." The staff at XC were however more positive, even to the extent of giving you advice to refer a RPO back to them (presumably your query had been logged).

But all of this got me thinking - does anybody know of any circumstances under which an easement would be withdrawn during engineering works? I know of one example when an easement only applied during a PW possession, and that was when Box tunnel was closed for electrification work not long ago, and posters appeared at Chippenham advising Bristol-bound travellers that they could travel via Swindon. This, however, didn't stop an RPO trying to tell me I was on the wrong train when half way up Filton bank, but that was quickly and easily resolved.

But going back to the easement in question, I struggled to think of any circumstances that may result in this Bromsgrove to Brum easement being suspended. The closest I got was a possession closing Barnt Green to Bromsgrove with XC trains having to go via Banbury. In such a case, by the time you got the replacement bus to Barnt Green, then a stopper into Brum, and then coming south "the pretty way" by XC, the journey would probably have taken longer than if you took your chance with GWR going via Worcester. But even then, would XC actually bother to formally and temporarily withdraw the easement for the duration? To me it sounds like more trouble than it was worth, especially taking into account the very small number of passengers that it would actually apply to.

Finally, after having some direct personal experience of telephone enquiries (on nights the Bristol TM enquiry office closed and calls were put through to the ASM's clerk - ie. me one week in three), this is not the sort of query that they would expect. I suspect that the person answering the phone only had limited knowledge of what you were talking about hence the delay whilst they "kicked the matter upstairs."

And if you went as far as quoting the easement number to them I suspect their internal conversation started with: "I've got a right one 'ere..."  ;D

With a query like mine, I totally did not expect the person who picked up the phone to have a quick answer and "I don't know - can I put you on hold while I find out" is far, far better than a guess.   And when that person comes back with "sorry it took a while", I reply something like "that's no problem - I don't think this is an every day question". 

I too have done some support call work - picking up the incoming business calls ranging from hotel and IT course queries to technical support on very specialist software and hardware products.   The unusual ones are interesting and - for me - often made my day.