Great Western Coffee Shop

From within the UK, without a VPN it's not quite straightforward to cost Britrail passes, as for reasons that escape me, the relevant web sites somewhat conceal the info from residents of the UK.

Thinking of an 8 day UK-wide Britrail pass versus a 7 day all line railrover we have the following.

7 day all line railrover - £540 standard class £818 First Class (source, National Rail)
Validity: there are *extensive* restrictions to travel before 10am Monday to Friday.

8 day Britrail pass - £258 standard class - (2020 prices: source: Trainline) or equivalent $436 first class - (source: Google).
Validity: the Britrail pass is just that: pretty well all trains, at any time, save for TfL-land.

Three thoughts:

* For the product sold in the UK, ATOC is pretty stretched to ensure that the various railrovers, even at the higher price, do not cannibalise the existing peak time travel ticketing take.

* As a result of the above, the attractiveness of a UK all line railrover is somewhat tarnished by the time restrictions placed on travel, GWR being the major exception. Not sure if this has always been the case or whether the likes of BR would have sold a 'Full fat, does what it says on the tin' all line railrover.

* The price differential is a facet of life in the UK that if applied elsewhere to a nation's transport system might have the population out on the streets.

And another thought: rail passes sold only to visitors is not a thing that's unique to the UK. Close at hand, we have Interrail and EUrail one-country passes to consider, prices vary by country.

Here's Interrail's links to the set of european countries:
https://www.interrail.eu/en/interrail-passes/one-country-pass

Here's the interrail single-country page for Britain.
https://www.interrail.eu/en/interrail-passes/one-country-pass/great-britain

Mark

And nor in aviation either - inbound returns are often cheaper than the same trip in reverse when to/from tourist destinations.

Current 8 day Britrail pass prices for visitors from EU (approx GBP in brackets):

Standard Class €278 (£230)
First Class €413 (£342)

I suppose that depends on how you define extensive. Note that the blanket restrictions for certain TOCs only apply to boarding or alighting at specific stations, so not really a blanket ban on the TOCs at all. The restrictions are:

Time Restrictions (not applicable to weekends and bank holidays):
NOT VALID for boarding or alighting before 10.00 Mondays to Fridays any service operated by:
Avanti West Coast, Cross Country, East Midlands Railway and London North Eastern Railway
at the following stations:
Birmingham New Street, Bedford, London Euston, London King's Cross, Luton, Luton Airport Parkway, Milton Keynes Central, St.Pancras, Stevenage & Watford Jn.

TOC Restrictions:
Rather than highlight where you can go it is simpler to state where you cannot go - it is NOT VALID on the following:
Eurostar, Heathrow Express, TfL (Crossrail) between Hayes & Harlington and Heathrow, Docklands Light Railway, London Underground, all local metro tram systems, shipping services or on any of the private railways except for the Ffestiniog Railway & Welsh Highland Railway (3rd class).

Note that tickets purchased with the Two-Together railcard remain valid on sleeper services to the destination if boarded before 04:30. This therefore excludes the 04:50 Edinburgh-Fort William.

The disparity of price between the All Line Rover and the Brit Rail pass is something that I find totally unfair on UK citizens who would like a ticket with unlimited rail for 7/14 days.

Sometimes the term ‘rip off Britain’ is fully justified and the All Line Rover certainly meets this criteria.

In my youth - "once upon a time, a long long time ago", I did a handful of all line rovers.  Based at Petts Wood in Kent, I was home most nights and travelled out from Euston, St Pancras, King's Cross, Liverpool Street, Waterloo or Paddington on early trains for long days exploring the rail network, with occasional overnight trains or stops at exstremis.


From a personal viewpoint, I looked to do similar when I retired. A major factor in my decision not to do so were the restrictions that have been added since my previous use a working lifetime ago that would have made such impossible.  The 05:33 from Melksham connects into Paddington for 06:59 in good time for the 08:00 to Edinburgh and from there the 12:37 to Perth, or 13:33 to Inverness ....

I must admit I’ve found it fairly easy to work around the restrictions on my two ALR trips.

It’s worth remembering you can head north out of London on the albeit slower services offered by London Midland (as was) now LNW and WMT, Great Northern or Thameslink from either Euston or Kings Cross.

You can also pass through Birmingham on Cross Country before 10am.  You just can’t board or alight.

Yeah, I know ... and it could perhaps be done but it was sufficient an extra hurdle to put me off ... loss of income for the railway. It becomes more enjoyable (and it IS about enjoyment, these being leisure trips) to work on a regional rover, stay in an area for a week, and accept a start time after the morning peak.

In the new order, with "peak" and "off peak" referring to the pricing and not the train loading, and far fewer hyperlong commutes which the restrictions were designed to stop on the all line rovers, is there a case to remove the restrictions? Who would look at that case and would they be sympathetic? 

There might be a case but I suspect there will be a delay while we wait to see how permanent and to what extent the change in commuting habits are. 

For me one of the joys of an ALR is the planning.  I spend quite a bit of time working out routes, times, hotels etc but you need timetables a good deal ahead of time to do that.  We are slowly getting back to the previous 12 weeks ahead of time deadline.

Whilst his thread is supposed to be about All Line Rovers versus Britrail passes, we seem to have ended up discussing ALR restrictions so I’ll add a bit more to that discussion!

I can understand the restrictions being something of a nuisance if you happen to live in the Greater London area (although even there as has already been pointed out they can be worked around), but it is difficult to see what the problem is in other areas of the country.

Let’s start with the basics. There may be some outliers, but the vast majority of people will need at least 8 hours at a base, be it home pr a hotel, for sleeping washing and at last one snack meal. That leaves up to 16 other hours in a day, and it is not imperative for anybody that that time period has to start on the first train of the day. You can start a bit later and finish a bit later, especially in these days of clock face timetables.

For me personally when I have had ALR tickets, my journeys started from Chippenham usually between 0700 and 0800 and I was always back home by 2230. If I wanted to go via Euston Kings Cross or Liverpool Street – simples – go up on the 0755 Padd and by the time I’d got to the other London terminal station it was already close to or after 1000 so the restrictions didn’t apply anyway. If I wanted to go north by XC then there was no restriction except on boarding or alighting at Brum, and the 0625 Plymouth (0830 ex Bristol) was booked to stop at New Street from 0958 to 1003. Once again no problem

It is very difficult indeed for me to see how an area rover ticket, with blanket peak hour restrictions and of course by its very nature, line restrictions, is in any way  “better” that an ALR. Perhaps I’m missing something, but I don’t think I am

Beware of coming to a conclusion and then scratching around for evidence to support it.

It's 'better' in the sense that it covers the whole country. You can't, for example, travel from Devon to Scotland on a combination of regional multi day Rovers for less than the cost of the Std Class All Line. Nor start in the morning peak. Nor travel First Class.

£126.30 is a better price than £540.00 . I can get four weeks in four different parts of the country for the price of 1 covering the whole country.

Perhaps you can, but unless their areas all include Melksham (in which case it would hardly include all parts of the country), you have to get there and either lodge there or "commute."

And that costs money, perhaps large amounts of it, that needs to be factored into the total equation.

Yup, for destinations not capacity-constrained, National Rail could certainly be selling a combined 'travel from home with a 3 in 7 day' rover ticket.

Mark

We're drifting off topic - HOWEVER we could split the topic and the discussions head to be useful.

There is a lot to be said for a holiday product of a return ticket to your holiday destination packaged with a local area rail rover in your destination area.   Let's try an example

Petts Wood to Plymouth - one week holiday. Super off peak return £116.60 ... add Freedom of Devon and Cornwall for intermediate days at £10.00 per day wanted ...

There's a really annoying way in which they make rovers useless for people from Birmingham. Take for instance the Coast and Peaks one. You have to buy a separate ticket to Telford or Stafford first. Absolute madness (somehow Manchester doesn't get revenue-gouged in the same way on that one – no idea why they're that inconsistent). Likewise the East Midlands one, which starts at Tamworth or Nuneaton. Likewise the Severn and Solent one, which starts at Worcester or Ashchurch. The Explore Wales one will let you go from Birmingham, but only towards Crewe (with massive TOC restrictions) or Shrewsbury, and not towards Hereford or Cheltenham. Of course the main culprit is Britain's worst InterCity TOC, CrossCountry (wouldn't it be a better world if we could abolish them, and GWR, Avanti, and EMR could run InterCity services terminating in Birmingham?). But there's a proper dog-in-the-manger bunfight between TfW and LNR going on there – LNR won't honour TfW's rovers between Birmingham and Hereford, and TfW won't honour LNR's ones between Hereford, Shrewsbury, and Crewe – bring back Central Trains, all is forgiven...