Bignosemac's GWR trip November 2019 *NOW ON HOLD*

[whole diary]

[JayMac]

I have a complimentary scratchcard ticket with which I'm intending to rack up some miles this Friday and Saturday with GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway).

This will be used for a 'state of the (GWR) nation' roving report to see how things are on long distance services ahead of the major timetable change.

My plan is as follows:

Friday
0941 Castle Cary to London Paddington 1111 (buying ticket for this - see below)
1203 London Paddington - Penzance 1709

An overnight stay in Penzance. Then on Saturday I shall return from Cornwall to Somerset on a selection of trains to be decided on the day. I'm aiming to get a 'Castle Class' set at some point.

Now, back to the ticket I'm buying from Castle Cary. National Rail Enquires and BRFares both say that the Super Off Peak Single is valid from 0940 (validity code XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise))). I've not found a booking engine that will sell me said ticket for the 0941 though. And @GWRHelp has thus far concurred with the booking engines and said the first train I can catch is the 0955 changing at Westbury.

I will of course be buying the Super Off Peak, as I won't be breaking any railway laws or byelaws if there's a difference of opinion with staff. I'll state my case and, if its insisted upon, pay the excess, up to and Off Peak Single and complain later. I have to say though that whilst I would (and have in the past) experienced issues with more esoteric but valid tickets I'm disappointed that I'm already concerned about the potential consequences of using a straightforward point-to-point ticket.

[grahame]

Now, back to the ticket I'm buying from Castle Cary. National Rail Enquires and BRFares both say that the Super Off Peak Single is valid from 0940 (validity code XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise))). I've not found a booking engine that will sell me said ticket for the 0941 though. And @GWRHelp has thus far concurred with the booking engines and said the first train I can catch is the 0955 changing at Westbury.

from BRFares conditions ...

Outward Travel; Not valid for travel on trains timed to depart after 04:29 and before the times shown from the following stations: .... 10:30 from Pewsey; ....09:45 from Taunton ...

Condition is the the train not the station. Your train leaves Taunton at 09:20, Pewsey at 10:18 .

That's from a huge unformatted block of text that's really hard to read but, sorry, reads to me that it's not valid on the 09:40 from CLC^▸ (Castle Cary).

[stuving]

Now, back to the ticket I'm buying from Castle Cary. National Rail Enquires and BRFares both say that the Super Off Peak Single is valid from 0940 (validity code XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise))). I've not found a booking engine that will sell me said ticket for the 0941 though. And @GWRHelp has thus far concurred with the booking engines and said the first train I can catch is the 0955 changing at Westbury.

The journey planners are only obeying orders, of course - in the unpublished restrictions the entry for Castle Cary applying now says: "Not valid to depart   CASTLE CARY   0430–0944   on any TOC^▸ (Train Operating Company)". Obviously that does not agree with the human-readable equivalent: "09:40 from Castle Cary (if travel is via Bath Spa, ...)".

The version published by NRE^‡(resolve) has the words but not (by definition) the unpublished data, and we are directed to look there for detailed details. We are also told to use their OJP^▸ (Online Journey Planner) to test validity. Now I think that counts as an offence under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 - either misleading availability or misleading information. Mind you, maybe the whole fares system is so confusing it would fall foul of that too.

After Decmeber 15th the OJP instruction changes to "Not valid to depart   CASTLE CARY   0430–0939   on any TOC" - but don't get all excited, as there isn't a train at anything like that time in the new timetable.

[JayMac]

Condition is the the train not the station. Your train leaves Taunton at 09:20, Pewsey at 10:18 .

That's from a huge unformatted block of text that's really hard to read but, sorry, reads to me that it's not valid on the 09:40 from CLC^▸ (Castle Cary).

It's important to read all that text. Castle Cary is in there. It's a station. it has trains that depart at certain times. And it's human readable validity times under code XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise)) are as quoted by stuving.

And I agree with stuving regarding contractual terms. Ambiguity favours the consumer. The text information and the online journey planner (OJP^▸ (Online Journey Planner)) disagree. I, as the consumer, am siding with the text!

[stuving]

Outward Travel; Not valid for travel on trains timed to depart after 04:29 and before the times shown from the following stations: .... 10:30 from Pewsey; ....09:45 from Taunton ...

Condition is the the train not the station. Your train leaves Taunton at 09:20, Pewsey at 10:18 .

I think that's ambiguous - the condition might be understood to apply to the train only at that station. I don't think I've ever seen an explanation of how to read those restrictions, but common sense suggests this interpretation:

Why would you list all those stations if some of the times are wrong on (I suspect) all relevant trains on the line?
Why does it also say (in the notes) "Super Off-Peak tickets from stations not listed are valid for connections into trains departing as shown above."? OK, that's ambiguous too, but is most likely to be read as about departure time of the connection.

Also, the time restriction codes in the data feed apply to the journey, not to the train elsewhere on its travels (as I read it anyway). So there isn't an implementation route for the other interpretation in JPs. Each time restriction item specifies one of arrive/depart/via (and also defines valid, not invalid, time periods). I think that's part of the reason why so many unpublished restriction line items are needed - to avoid the JPs having to look at the rest of the train's route.

[grahame]

This code is ... even harder to follow ... than most.

Outward Travel; Not valid for travel on trains timed to depart after 04:29 and before the times shown from the following stations: 09:00 from Ashchurch; 09:10 from Avoncliff (if travel is via Bath Spa, the restriction time shown for Bath Spa also applies for journeys eastbound from this station); 10:00 from Bath Spa; 09:35 from Bradford on Avon (if travel is via Bath Spa, the restriction time shown for Bath Spa also applies for journeys eastbound from this station); 09:20 from Bridgwater; 10:10 (also valid between 02:00 and 05:30) from Bristol Parkway; 09:58 (also valid between 02:00 and 05:10) from Bristol Temple Meads; 09:40 from Castle Cary (if travel is via Bath Spa, the restriction time shown for Bath Spa also applies for journeys eastbound from this station); 09:15 from Cheltenham Spa (if travel is via Bristol Parkway, the restriction time shown for Bristol Parkway also applies for journeys eastbound from this station); 10:10 from Chippenham; 09:00 from Dawlish; 09:20 from Exeter St Davids; 09:10 from Freshford (if travel is via Bath Spa, the restriction time shown for Bath Spa also applies for journeys eastbound from this station); 09:55 from Frome; 09:30 from Gloucester (if travel is via Bristol Parkway, the restriction time shown for Bristol Parkway also applies for journeys eastbound from this station); 09:00 from Highbridge; 09;00 from Ivybridge; 10:10 from Kemble; 09:40 from Nailsea & Backwell; 10:30 from Pewsey; 10:00 from Patchway 09:30 from Stonehouse; 09:50 from Stroud; 10:30 (also valid between 02:00 and 05:45) from Swindon; 09:45 from Taunton; 09:00 from Teignmouth; 09:35 from Tiverton Parkway; 09:23 from Trowbridge; 09:30 from Westbury (if travel is via Bath Spa, the restriction time shown for Bath Spa also applies for journeys eastbound from this station); 09:20 from Weston Milton; 09:00 from Weston-Super-Mare; 09:10 from Nailsea and Backwell; 09:30 from Worle; 09:40 from Yatton. Not valid on trains timed to arrive at Birmingham New Street before 10:15. Not valid on trains timed to arrive at London Waterloo before 11:48.

Not valid on trains timed to arrive at Birmingham New Street before 10:15.

Not valid on trains timed to arrive at London Waterloo before 11:48.

Then below

UNPUBLISHED RESTRICTIONS
Intended for use by computerised journey planners and online booking systems.
To determine whether a journey is permitted, the time restrictions shown below are applied to:
* The origin and destination of the journey
* All locations where a passenger changes trains during a journey
* The final destination of all trains travelled on during a journey
(whether or not the passenger is travelling to that final destination)
Note that these data can not be used to determine time restrictions when breaking and
resuming a journey at an intermediate station.

Includes

Not valid to depart   CASTLE CARY   0430–0944   on any TOC^▸ (Train Operating Company)

The web site at BrFares as a whole says it is

This is an independent website that allows expert users to fully explore the variety of fares offered by the train companies in Great Britain, without having to plan a journey or specify times and trains.

and

Site Operator: BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)) Fares Ltd. This site is not accredited by National Rail.

Having said which, the data is excellent and I believe does come from the official feeds / sources.  It's date marked and I have quoted elements above dated for a November 2019 Friday.

I worry about the whole concept of "unpublished restrictions".  Perhaps it's a poor use of words - but it strikes me as very bad practise to restrict fares but the say they are "unpublished" which means that the poor sod who just uses the published data can get caught by hidden extra rules and restrictions (or, perhaps, can go past a fare option for something more expensive because these restrictions are less onerous).

There is also a double negative at play - "not valid to depart between 04:30 and 09:44" does NOT say "valid to depart up to and until 04:29 and at 09:45 and later" - we may kinda assume that, or may we??

I had - I will admit - missed the "09:40 from Castle Cary" in the top section when reading earlier ...


Looking back to an old printed timetable I have (2007), the equivalent of the train you want to catch was shown as leaving Castle Cary at 09:39. I suspect the intent when the condition was written was that the super off peak ticket to London was not to be valid on "this" train.   The "published" condition has not been updated to take account of the train now running 2 minutes later, so you should be OK. The "unpublished" condition has been updated / added so by that you are NOT OK.  I don't know which way the contradiction resolves - which element trumps which other element.

[JayMac]

An unpublished restriction can't be contractually enforced surely?

And whilst you are right about BRFares being unofficial, I got my information about code XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise)) from the official source:

http://nre.co.uk/xc

Oh, and a Super Off Peak Single didn't exist between Castle Cary and London Terminals in 2007. Super Off Peaks were introduced by FGW^▸ (First Great Western) in September 2009. The restriction code back then was WJ. If the train in question departed at 0939 in late 2009 then, admittedly, it supports the hypothesis that the current public XC text is an error and the unpublished restriction is correct. WJ had 0945 for Castle Cary.

Screengrab of code WJ from late 2009 is attached.

[Red Squirrel]

https://youtu.be/GHIQzFuLAcU

[JayMac]

Hopefully I won't have my head nailed to the floor on arrival at Paddington. Gateline staff there can be an issue but I don't think they're yet at the level of Dinsdale.

[ChrisB]

It'll be interesting to learn whether your ticket successfully operates the barriers at PAD^» (Paddington (London) - next trains).

[grahame]

It'll be interesting to learn whether your ticket successfully operates the barriers at PAD^» (Paddington (London) - next trains).

I doubt they'll be tested as the train (today at least) arrives at platform 1 at Paddington

[stuving]

Looking back to an old printed timetable I have (2007), the equivalent of the train you want to catch was shown as leaving Castle Cary at 09:39. I suspect the intent when the condition was written was that the super off peak ticket to London was not to be valid on "this" train.   The "published" condition has not been updated to take account of the train now running 2 minutes later, so you should be OK. The "unpublished" condition has been updated / added so by that you are NOT OK.  I don't know which way the contradiction resolves - which element trumps which other element.

It is clear that the detailed restriction timings are tweaked to match the train times (except, is in this case for the slab of text, when they aren't). It also looks as if the data feed to JPs is seen as primary, and keeping the text in sync is seen as less important. By GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway), presumably, as I assume they are responsible for these details of the codes used for the flows they price, though possibly having to collaborate if they are shared. I think we have probably reached the point where it would be simpler to indicate acceptability of off-peak ticket types in the timetable, rather than GWR translate that into times at stations and us all have to translate it back again.

But surely (and it's a bit odd Graham seems to have missed this) BRFares just takes the data feed and translates it into text for us to read. I had assumed that big slab of text was a single field in one (or divided between several) of the records in the restrictions file. But it can't be - the only record* with any text fields is the restriction header record (e.g. the header for restriction XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise))) which has three, called description fields - for the whole code (30 characters), for outward journeys (50), and for return journeys (50). Just that main block for XC is 2076 long, and the longest single "line" (Cheltenham Spa) is 164. So that must come from elsewhere! I wonder where ... OK, most likely just taken from nre.co.uk and formatted for the page?

However, if anything that reinforces the point that the unpublished restrictions are not published because they are generated and sent to JPs as (most of) the content of the restrictions file (updated about three times a week) in the data feed. Their purpose is to encode the restrictions unambiguously for JPs, and BRFares translates them into text. NRE^‡(resolve)/RSP may do this internally, I suspect, so they (including TOC^▸ (Train Operating Company) and other staff) can sit around in meetings arguing about them. But officially they are not needed by us because the text says the same in readable form - which is highly debatable.

* there is also an exceptions record, 50 characters of free text but no coded data

[stuving]

I think I've just spotted evidence that the text version of the time restrictions is not generated by computer from the data feeds' coded data, which was I guess a possibility. If you hunt down the list (in XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise))) for Ivybridge, you will find that the time given is 09;00 - with a semicolon not a colon. Now times in the data feed are always represented by four numeric characters, so if you want colons in the the middle you have to add them yourself. That error could only have been made by the hand of a human handling this process.

So my guess is that some poor junior minion has the job of updating them from a representation of the unpublished data feed contents, presumably doing so in batches to be held and then uploaded to nre.co.uk at predetermined dates (the dates shown on BRFares in the unpublished data lists). One thing that flags up is that while the JPs know about future changes of the restriction times, we don't because we only see the current version. That (or at least the fact that it's not mentioned) is arguably an issue under the CPRs in itself.

[JayMac]

The trip itself has been put on hold. A concerning medical issue has arisen today. Would rather be nearer home. GP suggested likewise.

[broadgage]

So sorry to hear that, and hope that you soon recover. (or that the other party recover if the issue is not your own health)