Great Western Coffee Shop

Since when has this existed???

I booked some tickets for saturday to go to newport (i'd rather get them now incase i was late getting to the station) and collected them today. Turns out they have a "FGW ONLY" Stamp on them...


Since when have FGW ever had any say over which trains people go on for a nationally available ticket???


Anyone know my rights on this, ie get on any train? As i'd rather not wait for a train every half hour, when theres one every 10 minutes...

The ticket you have purchased has a route FGW ONLY - there will also be an ANY PERMITTED ticket available.

I would normally suggest that you should excess fare the FGW only one - but TOC specific tickets can not be excessed (even though the ticket systems allow it - it's not permitted).

You can get similar operator specific all around the country.

You can't get on any other train apart from a FGW service, HOWEVER it might be worth having a word with the guard of the service if it's not a FGW to see if they will allow it.

Was this from Cardiff - in which case there are 4 FGW trains an hour, which doesn't seem so bad. Were you given a choice of ticket and went for the cheapest, which would be the restricted operator only.

FGW introduced their cheaper tickets to undercut ATW on the Swansea to Newport run. But I seem to recall Arriva retaliated almost immediately. If you want to go from Swansea to London in the peak it's a lot cheaper to book to Newport and then on again from Newport to London.

Oh but we had competition like that on this side of the tunnel. 

Nope, this was advertised as a "cheap day return", and is supposed to give me access to ATW routes as well... (and is exactly the same price as the ATW ticket i might add)


if s**t (and it probably will) happens and i have to get an ATW train its only ^1 to get a single, as i'm coming back at gone midnight...

Yes, it's advertised as a cheap day return. That doesn't mean to say that it is route restricted - which yours is.

It's perfectly valid to do the routing - it's existed for years, so why not now?

no details were ever given of ANY route restriction when i booked it though...

Who did you book it through?

If it was online and was through one of TheTrainLine interfaces...
(http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/5415/thetrainlinexn4.jpg)

virgin

http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/2710/picture5md8.png

Says ROUTE: Valid only on Great Western services there...

According to my (out-of-date) copy of Avantix traveller, there are separate Any-permitted and GW-only CDRs:(http://ndrailusers.wikispaces.com/space/showimage/Avantix.gif)

The odd thing is i specifically selected one i could use on all trains, not just FGW. As they have a habit of canceling the late night services round here!

but oh well, if they do, it's only ^1 for an unrestricted ticket to cardiff

They launched it last year. (Correct me if I am wrong) FGW are regulated along there, so can only change there fares once a year, Arriva can whenever, so when FGW made a cheaper price for FGW ONLY, ATW made a cheaper price for the any permitted, IIRC.

Cant say ive every come across this myself, although sometimes when reading the departure boards in the station on an Arriva Trains Wales service to Manchester for example it will say "tickets marked FGW only are not permitted on this service". I often wondered what those tickets were as mine always say "any permitted service"

Also ive just realised FGW run more services between Cardiff and Newport than either of the other 2 operators on this line. Twice as many trains as ATW sometimes as they run 4 trains an hour during the week, and 3 an hour on Saturdays, whilst ATW run mainly 2 an hour, and Crosscountry 1 an hour.

To me they should rename that ticket a 'FGW Day Return' or 'FGW Cheap Day Return' to make it clear it's only availible on FGW. I'm in total agreement with Shazz, 'Cheap Day Return' tickets should be universal and availible on all TOCs. It's no wonder passengers are so baffled these days.

You absoultly should not have access to that ;) ;D

I have it too. It's freely available to anyone who types the name of said program into a certain monolithic search engine!

Indeed, however you got it, its now out of date, sadly!

Someone on the inside needs to upload an up to date copy!  ;)

There are three mistakes in that sentence. Can you spot them all?

I've spent more than 1 minutes on a Voyager today if that helps to explain why there are two spelling mistakes, it is probably also worded wrongly but to be frankly honest, I couldn't care less!

Hence why I use the Firefox British English spell-checker plugin!

Correct sentance ?
You should absolutely not have access to the Avantix.

ATW didnt care anyway, and let me travel with it  :P

Well blame ATOC on that one - they after all released it in public on their website for about a day and a half!!!

In my opinion it should be available to everyone anyway. What have they got to hide?

The fact that it was meant to not be made anymore after the last fares change - although I am told it's continuing until the next fares change due to delays..  ;D