Great Western Coffee Shop

From a condition quoted on BR Fares (please excuse the caps - theirs not mine).


TOC usually stands for "Train Operating Company"? ... How do Hovertravel, Wightlink and Red Funnel fit?  Not aware they operate any trains.

Rail tickets are valid on their services. Presumably for that reason they come under ticketing rules? Wightlink in particular is a direct link from Portsmouth Harbour to Ryde pier

You can buy tickets right through to Shanklin from stations on North Island, with the hovercraft doing the wet part of the route.

Reminds me of the old joke: "What's brown and steaming, and comes backwards out of Cow[e]s?"

I looked at that last week but it was only possible by the non hovercraft option.

That said, I took a look at the ticket prices to Portsmouth from Bristol and added to that the separate cost of a foot passenger for the hovercraft including adding the Island Line travel option. In some cases it was slightly cheaper and never more expensive than the through ticket price.

Edit: This was based on a day return basis. I don't know how it may apply to period returns.

Which is exactly what I did a week or so ago. Fratton to Shanklin via Hovertravel.

I believe you can also get through tickets including the Gosport Ferry, or that is what their advertising suggests.

The ferries to Cowes and Yarmouth are heavily used by cyclists in summer, who have often come by train, to do the 100km Round the Island. Folding bikes only on the West Cowes jetfoil.

Did I see somewhere that either Wightlink or Red Funnel were being taken over?

Station code XOF - example http://www.brfares.com/#!fares?orig=XOF&dest=WAT (http://www.brfares.com/#!fares?orig=XOF&dest=WAT)

If you put that into any journey planner, it will find an itinerary using the ferry timetable - i.e. using XOF for the Gosport-end ferry terminal. If you've wondered how that works, and what is possible, this is a quick description.

The "system" of data feeds includes three files to allow links that are not trains, one of which is a timetable file of what are called Z-trains (i.e. not trains at all, but links nonetheless). Even if a timetable isn't included, a JP can use the link based on a link travel time that allows for waiting.

The links are defined in one of two formats, old or new. The older format looks like:
ADDITIONAL LINK: WALK BETWEEN AHV AND NCM IN 10 MINUTES

The newer format is more structured and allows service times and days of operation to be added (it's likely that only this one is still used), e.g.:
M=METRO,O=MAN,D=MCV,T=8,S=0001,E=2359,P=5,F=07/01/2017,U=28/02/2017

The defined link types are:
BUS, TUBE, WALK, FERRY, METRO, TRAM, TAXI or TRANSFER

And that's all there is to it - surprisingly simple, though of course the Z-trains file itself is in the TTIS CIF format for rail timetables, which is orders of magnitude more complicated.