Great Western Coffee Shop

Could someone help with the following questions please?

We've got some visitors arriving at Heathrow on 24th July and intending to travel to Exmouth by train. For various reasons they want to travel via Paddington (as opposed to Railair Link to Reading), and they don't want to pre-book their tickets as they've had problems previously with an international flight being seriously late.

They will hit Paddington in the evening peak, so the best solution I've found for them cost-wise is Heathrow Connect to PAD (purchased as a separate ticket), then travel on the 18.03 to Penzance as far as EXD (and change for EXM). On the intercity train, it is cost-effective to split at RDG because the peak has ended by the time the train gets there, so they can get Anytime singles as far as RDG and Off-peak singles for RDG-EXM.

My questions are:-
1. Online you can do all of the above, and you may even be able to fiddle with seat selection so as to get the same seats for both legs. However, in the printed timetable the 18.03 is shown as pick-up only at RDG. Does this affect the validity of split tickets, so as to potentially cause problems either when buying them in the ticket office or when the tickets are checked on the train?

2. What is the latest before a train departs that you can reserve a seat? In other words, will they be able to pitch up at PAD at, say, 17.00, buy the tickets and reserve seats on the 18.03?

3. Presumably they could purchase both legs separately at PAD (depending on the answer to Q1 above), but does anyone know whether they could buy those tickets (ie. PAD-RDG and RDG-EXM) over the counter at Heathrow? I ask because Heathrow doesn't appear to be a normal National Rail station (it doesn't have the three letter code and you can't collect pre-paid tickets from the TVM).

4. In case it's not possible to get reservations this close to departure, which is the unreserved coach in HSTs? I've warned them that they will not be the only ones making a beeline for it at PAD.

Hopefully someone will know the answer to these!

Thanks.

Hi Ross H.

I'm happy to look into this for you, but I'm heading out the door shortly. I'll take a look at some options later this evening. Couple of questions.

How many people are travelling?
What are their ages (no need for specific, just adult, child, senior)?
Will they being making any other journeys by train whilst in the UK?
Will they be returning to Heathrow by train? If so when?

In the meantime if anyone else can make suggestions, do please post.

I presumme BNM is thinking about Interrail passes which they could buy in their home country which will give 3, 4, 6, 8, days rail travel in a month and range from E216 to E334. However, they are only valid for people who have lived in Europe for 6 months and not in the holders own country.

Source Today's Railways Europe Rail Pass and Continental Europe 2014

Thanks both.

There are two of them; they are coming from New Zealand and already have UK senior railcards. They will be returning to Heathrow just over a month later (26th August I think) and are unlikely to be doing much else in the way of train travel while they are here.

What about the BritRail pass?

If your friends travel on the 1803 they can split at Reading to take advantage of the Off Peak fare from Reading to Exmouth as that is valid from 1830 off Reading.

Combining that with a Heathrow Connect single to Paddington and an Anytime Single from Paddington to Reading is probably going to be the cheapest flexible walk-up option.

Now, for reservations with the split tickets from Paddington to Reading and Reading to Exmouth. The only way to guarantee the same seats throughout is to buy the tickets from a ticket office. Obviously that's not possible for someone in New Zealand. They may be able to contact FGW's telesales department, but I'm not sure if FGW would post tickets and reservations to New Zealand. Would it be possible for you Ross H to purchase the tickets then post them?

Your friends will be able to buy the necessary tickets at Paddington on the day, but won't be able to get seat reservations unless they can purchase a full two hours before the train is due to depart its origin station. Even then there are no guarantees seats will be available. Particularly as their date of travel (25th July) is a Friday, is in the peak, and is either the first or second day of the school summer holidays for most state schools in the UK.

So my suggestion is to buy the tickets yourself and then forward them to New Zealand. If you explain to the clerk why you need tickets with a Senior Railcard discount they may oblige and also sort out through reservations with the split. Alternatively you could book the tickets online obtaining reservations for the Reading to Exmouth portion of the split and then go immediately to a station to attempt to get the same seats for the Paddington to Reading portion.

My suggestion is not risk free though. I'd seriously considering insuring the tickets if air-mailing them.

If anyone has any personal experience of booking tickets and seat reservations for overseas visitors do please share. It's not something I've ever done and for that reason I'm not wholly confident the process I've suggested (and it is just a suggestion) will work flawlessly.

Many thanks Bignosemac for that very detailed reply.

I've found out that Virgin trains will post tickets abroad for an extra ^7.50 (thanks to Man in Seat 61 for this info), so that is a possibility too. As an experiment I've tried setting up an account with Virgin and reserving both legs of the intercity journey (without going through to payment). I've done it for next week as you can't do it yet for 24th July. You can't select specific seats on FGW trains but at least I was given seats in the same coach for both legs. I suspect it's unlikely that the seats for the second leg would be reserved to anyone else as far as RDG anyway.

As a matter of interest, which is the unreserved coach in HSTs - I believe it is E?

Finally, thanks Chris B for the suggestion of Britrail passes. I don't think this quite stacks up for what they want to do (assuming I've converted NZD to GBP correctly) but it comes tantalisingly close!

Thanks for all your help.

Ross

It is indeed E and for trains with a mini buffet coach F is an unreserved standard class coach too.  However in the case of the 18:03 from London Paddington it should have a full kitchen and first class coach F as it carries a restaurant!

East Midlands Trains use the same (trainline) booking back end as Virgin Trains without the ability to select different seats.

I managed to get a two leg split in the same seats by selecting "near toilet" and booking both in the same transaction/basket.

Thanks Fourbee, that's a really useful tip.

I think it's also possible to add more and more bookings to your basket until you get the seats you want, and then delete all the unsuccessful attempts before paying. I remember trying that once, I think it was to get seaward seats on a journey via Dawlish into Cornwall. And then the HST arrived the wrong way round so we went and sat somewhere else anyway!