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If I buy a ticket from Westbury to London; it says "London Paddingtn" - no problem.
If I buy a ticket from Warminster to Waterloo it says "London Terminals". I know that if I leave the Warminster/Waterloo train at Clapham Jct that is permissible, but can I travel on to (say) Kings Cross from Waterloo on that ticket - and, if so, how ?  Tube ?

No. In this context 'London Terminals' really means 'the approriate London Terminal in accordance with the ATOC routeing guide'. If you want Kings Cross the Ticket needs to be issued to London U1. This will allow the single/return tube journey.  One point is that the barrier line at Waterloo will return your outward ticket, but this is becasue it may be valid to Charing Cross or London Bridge. It won't get you in the underground.

Indeed Clapham Junction isn't a London Terminal, so you would be ending your journey short - I don't believe your ticket would operate the barriers, even if ending short is ok for your ticket type.

Paul

You should be able to get a 'London Terminals' ticket from Westbury, for the same fare as any other walk-on ticket. Permitted routes allow you to pitch up at Paddington (direct, via Swindon, via Bristol/Bath) Waterloo (via Salisbury, via Reading) or Victoria (via Salisbury and Clapham Junction).
 
Reading the rules of the routeing guide to the letter you could also go to Waterloo from Westbury via Exeter if you so wished!

Dont forget Charing cross.  You may be able to do London Bridge and Cannon Street as well but I'm not sure.

I've looked at all the permitted routes  for Westbury to London Group stations and none include a map with Charing Cross, London Bridge or Cannon Street. However you can of course walk over to Waterloo East and I'm fairly certain your London Terminals ticket will let you continue your journey to Charing Cross, London Bridge or Cannon Street, a technicality rather than a permitted route I suspect.

The problem is that they can't set the ticket barriers to differentiate valid routes. So although there is no valid route up the SWML beyond Waterloo, eg to Charing Cross, the barrier set up has to allow for someone who has come off the SN patch, via Clapham Junction for instance.

SWT explained at a meet the manager that all London Terminals tickets would be allowed through the Waterloo barriers so that you can get to Charing Cross. The reality is that not all routes are valid, but they can't be sorted out automatically.

Paul

They should get rid of London Terminals, and passengers should specify the London terminus of their choice. If no reasonable rail route gets there, then the price of a Zone 1 single journey should be added.

This would also simplify routes as well. e.g. Instead of Kidderminster to London Terminals with about 3 different routes, there would be separate Kid to Marylebone, Euston and Paddington fares. (and all the others with an extra Tube fare)

I was told we should ALWAYS sell London Terminals or London U1 instead of a specific London ticket, so someone at Westbury is getting it wrong.

No, no, no!   (You may get the feeling I don't agree with you!).  I used to live about 15 miles to the South East of the centre of London, and we had a choice of trains to Victoria or Charing Cross, with extra peak hour services into Holborn Viaduct and Cannon Street.   At first, you bought a ticket to a specific terminal, but that later changed to (as i recall) "London SR" and that allowed travel up to (say) Victoria and back from Chrsing Cross.  The flexibility of being able to do an "open leg" day was / is great ... and on evenings that I got held up in town, and missed the last service from Cannon Street, I could travel from Blackfriars. It also helped at times of operational difficulty (yes, we had them too), allowing you to travel on a different route if your train on one route eas cancelled or you were too late through the barrier and only saw the tail of the train you wanted.  And it really made no difference to the train operating company (our TOC was British Rail in those days).

With the reduction of single fares to truely half of a return fare, you might have had an argument (that was a very fair move) but with the subsequent re-introduction of a differential, I for one would favour a "London Terminals" return every time.   I might go IN to Paddington, but then find myself, after a day's carefree sightseeing and showing people around, at Waterloo.

I, too, regularly make trips to 'London Terminals' and enjoy the flexibility the ticket affords. I can travel up to Paddington, from Bristol, have a day out with a friend in The Smoke and then return from Waterloo, breaking my journey at Bracknell for an overnight stay at my friends house. I can then complete my journey home the following day. And all on one return fare.

That doesn't make sense to me as when I buy a London Terminals ticket, there is always a specific route! So I can't travel from Kidderminster to Marylebone and then back from Paddington, as it is either "route High Wycombe" or "route Worcester". Perhaps if I dug a little further, I would find an Any Permitted - but I expect it is A LOT more expensive.

I never knew that some people had flexible "London Terminal" tickets! >:( In those cases, of course they should remain.

Many thanks for all the comments - most interesting.  I always thought I was a fairly "savvy" rail user, no wonder many get so confused.

I was told by the guard on the train that Clapham was a "terminal", the ticket didn't operate the barrier, but the man on the barrier was happy with the ticket.
I was really intrigued by Mac's comment about going from Westbury to Waterloo via Exeter - that would be different. I wondered how the conversation with the guard would go - as we headed West through Castle Cary !

Let me just explain in a bit more detail what led me to this question:
If I travel to London,  I nearly always go on the SWT service from Warminster, cheap, convenient & reasonable quality trains. I always buy my tickets on-line(usually FGW site, sometimes SWT) and collect from the machine on the station. I always ask for tickets to Waterloo and always get "London Terminals" actually printed on the ticket. Route is AP Salisbury.
When buying some advance tickets for Feb, I discovered that there were no trains Basingstoke/Woking that weekend, so decided to go from Westbury. I asked for tickets to Paddington and that is exactly what I got ! Route is GW Only.

This set me thinking as to what I would get if I went in person and just asked for a ticket to "London". The FGW website gives trains to Pad and Wat from Warminster and just Pad from Westbury if I only ask for "London" - but this doesn't tell me what would be printed on the ticket !

When you ask for trains from Westbury to London, most of the online planners will default to disregarding the route to Waterloo, because the time to Paddington is always going to be quicker.  If you go to 'advanced options' and select 'show overtaken services' they might come up though, otherwise set Salisbury as a via point. They will be found eventually! :)

Once you get into Advance tickets though, you'll find that they'll be 'route FGW only', or maybe 'route SWT only' so that would overide the terminal availability anyway even if the ticket showed 'London Terminals'. I think the ticket would be interpreted as 'any London Terminal as long as FGW serve it', for example.

With regard to the routeing guide, what used to be available may no longer be there. After someone tried to go on a round the houses route a few months ago (something like Woking to Reading via Exeter IIRC), and during the journey apparently had a major set to with SWT staff, some quick changes were made.  I think the moral is, if you find something that looks too good to be true in the routeing guide, keep quiet about it...

Paul

As Paul says an ADV ticket is likely to be routed 'booked train only' and not 'any permitted'. In the examples I gave upthread I was highlighting the options available with walk-up tickets only.

According to Avantix there's an off-peak return routed 'Birmingham' at ^43.50 (NFM03 prices). I take it that would be valid to Euston, Marylebone, or Paddington (via Brum)?

The cheapest return fare listed is a London Midland only Super Off-Peak return ticket at ^15 - did you know about that one Btline? Restrictions are:

Restriction : LK
MONDAYS to FRIDAYS:           
                             
Not valid for travel on London
Midland services timed to     
ARRIVE London Terminals before
1300.                         
                             
Not valid for travel on       
northbound London Midland     
services timed to DEPART     
London Terminals or any other
station, before 1030.         
                             
RETURN TRAVEL                 
Not valid for travel on London
Midland services timed to     
DEPART any station between   
1630 and 1930 in either       
direction unless a connecting
service is being used to     
complete a journey begun at a
valid time.

So I could go to Euston and return from Paddington, so long as I travelled via B'ham?

I know about the LM fare. Every so often, the LM site allows you to reserve a seat on a VT service with that fare!

That's how I interpret it. There are people on here that understand the fares system in more detail than me though (I was an expert back in the Blue and White Saver days - but no so now!), so perhaps one of them can confirm?

The following time restrictions are mentioned for Paddington specifically:
             
You may travel on any train   
that is scheduled to DEPART as
shown below:

DEPART: LONDON PADDINGTON     
Between 0903 & 1647 (inc.) and
at or after 1831.
                 
You may travel on any train   
that is scheduled to ARRIVE_as
shown below:
                             
ARRIVE: LONDON PADDINGTON     
At or after 1039.