Eurostar fares - added on from Great Western starting point (merged topic)

[whole diary]

[Chris from Nailsea]

There's a special station code for St. Pancras International, I think there's a thread on it  probably a few years ago.

Thanks, eightf48544 - there was indeed such a discussion, in 2008, so I've now merged both topics here, in the interests of continuity and completeness for future reference.

[inspector_blakey]

IIRC^▸ (if I recall/remember/read correctly), the CIV^▸ (International Convention for the transportation of Passengers) is important because if your connecting train is delayed, it guarantees passage on a later train than the one you are booked on.  Particularly useful on the outward journey up to London, where you will almost certainly be on a booked train from St Pancras.

Spot on - the CIV is indeed important. The CIV conditions entitle the traveller to use the next available service in the event of a missed (advertised) connection, provided that you have planned your train journey to allow you to get to St Pancras in good time for Eurostar check-in.

Don't think it includes transferring via London underground though.  Certainly I had to buy another ticket when Eurostar left from Waterloo.

No idea why, as to the best of my knowledge London International CIV tickets have *always* included travel to the Eurostar terminal, and certainly do today. The exception these days are journeys originating on First Capital Connect, East Coast and East Midlands Trains: these would take you either to St Pancras Domestic, or Kings Cross (from which no underground journey to St Pancras is necessary or indeed possible, seeing as it's just across the street).

[cholsey]

Don't think it includes transferring via London underground though.  Certainly I had to buy another ticket when Eurostar left from Waterloo.

No idea why, as to the best of my knowledge London International CIV^▸ (International Convention for the transportation of Passengers) tickets have *always* included travel to the Eurostar terminal, and certainly do today. The exception these days are journeys originating on First Capital Connect, East Coast and East Midlands Trains: these would take you either to St Pancras Domestic, or Kings Cross (from which no underground journey to St Pancras is necessary or indeed possible, seeing as it's just across the street).

Indeed that now seems to be the case, which makes sense. It was over 10 years ago when I was refused entry to the tube with a CIV London International ticket at Paddington. 

[EBrown]

I'm travelling on Eurostar at 10:58 on Monday morning from St Pancras.   Through ticketed from St Pancras to my final destination in the Netherlands, but I couldn't find any system to sell me through ticket from Melksham or even Chippenham.

I understand there's an add-on available from my local station to St Pancras International, only to be used in conjunction with Eurostar.   Is this available walkup at Chippenham / on train from Melksham on Monday morning?

You can indeed buy that onboard. You may wish to inform the Guard when he can't find the ticket that it's 5470.

Just to warn you there are two routes available:
+Any Permitted (EOR/EVR are ^181/^73)
+Swindon (EOR/EVR are ^158/^66.50)

The ticket includes underground travel between PAD^» (Paddington (London) - next trains) and STP - there is a First Class option if you want... both the +AP and +Swindon are ^248.
There are no single tickets on this flow.

[JayMac]

There are no single tickets on this flow.

There are Single fares (EOS, EVS) in the retail systems. They're just missing from brfares.com.

[grahame]

I'm travelling on Eurostar at 10:58 on Monday morning from St Pancras.   Through ticketed from St Pancras to my final destination in the Netherlands, but I couldn't find any system to sell me through ticket from Melksham or even Chippenham.

I understand there's an add-on available from my local station to St Pancras International, only to be used in conjunction with Eurostar.   Is this available walkup at Chippenham / on train from Melksham on Monday morning?

You can indeed buy that onboard. You may wish to inform the Guard when he can't find the ticket that it's 5470.

Just to warn you there are two routes available:
+Any Permitted (EOR/EVR are ^181/^73)
+Swindon (EOR/EVR are ^158/^66.50)

The ticket includes underground travel between PAD^» (Paddington (London) - next trains) and STP - there is a First Class option if you want... both the +AP and +Swindon are ^248.
There are no single tickets on this flow.

Thanks, EBrown and all for the feedback on these fares, which I've never used before - I'm a real newbie at this one!

I thinks I'll go for standard class - 4 x time the fare for a journey that's only first for part of the way seems excessive (would probably have paid 1.5 times on this occasion as the start of a long day's travel!).    Any permitted is only useful on the 06:38 from Melksham - the 07:20 and 19:47 both run via Swindon, and the 19:11 via Westbury gets overtaken.  And on the return, the only useful train in the whole 24 hours is the 17:45 via SWI^» (Swindon - next trains) ... a second train involves a night spend on the platform at Swindon, and the two services via Westbury are overtaken by the two SWI trains. Not a brilliant service (!) but the trains happen to fit my travel plans next week.

[swrural]

I could pm but I think this may be interesting to others.  You did not say where you were going in NL.

Correct 

It may be private (no I am not insinuating 'coffee shops' and the like  ) but I could give some tips in the same way that we have over other hotels, etc, plus experience of using the OV Kaart.

I'm giving a training course, and not at liberty to reveal my customer company's names or too many clues to them without their permission ... and I think I'm going to a one-IT-company town.   It's a two-hotel town though, and my client has advised which hotel I should use already, I'm through ticketed to the town's station, in walking distance of the hotel and the place of work, so I suspect that I'm now past the point at which those inputs would have been of maximal use.
As general use / reading, I'm going to encourage posts somewhere (wider?) that describe other countries systems, especially where they give us lessons / contrasts / ideas - in fact I've posted a load of those in the past!

Then, bon voyage! (or rather 'Goeiereis'    ).
I have been boning up on this through booking lark (for my own benefit, I long to find out that train beats plane one of these days) and produced some astonishing results using the Eurostar and SWT^▸ (South West Trains) sites (I am certain the FGW^▸ (First Great Western) scene will be the same picture so I will look that up too, and produce overall comparisons).  So far I am getting advance prices that vary by three hundred percent or more, depending whether one buys in stages to STP (Int) or from one's home station.

Incidentally trying to book through to NL on the Eurstar site, it just keeps saying that there are no trains on that day.  I think this may be due to the Fyra fiasco (??), but it is a very poor denial message.  If you just split up the request and ask STP to Brussels (for instance) then you are no longer refused and are given loads of trains.  Very bad, and no wonder people just ring up and try to book, instead of using the net.   

[eightf48544]

Couple of things my ticket has a * against Taplow and a (dagger) against LONDON INT [CIV^▸ (International Convention for the transportation of Passengers)]

The other point is the reasons for the mess up with the Fyra is two fold. Crap trains from Italy and incomaptible ERTMS^▸ (European Rail Traffic Management System.) software between Belgium and Holland. There are lessons to be learnt from this for GWML^▸ (Great Western Main Line) moderniastion.

Hopefully the Hitachi IEP^▸ (Intercity Express Program / Project.) will work out of the box and secondly hopefully the whole line will be resignalled with the same version of  software. However, when it comes to resiganaling other lines, at a later date, to ERTMS. Great care will have to be taken as to the starting version  of the software.

It's similar to the problem with Windows if I were to buy a new machine today it would have Windows 8 installed, so do I upgrade my laptop to Windows 8 or down grade the new machine to Vista or carry on with two versions of Windows? The railway equivalent being do I have two types of IEP one confined to GWML and one to ECML^▸ (East Coast Main Line).

Moderators feel free to move the Fyra problems and it's affect on GWML modernisation to any other suitable thread as per Graham's idea of what can we learn from others.

[Brucey]

Couple of things my ticket has a * against Taplow and a (dagger) against LONDON INT [CIV^▸ (International Convention for the transportation of Passengers)]

The * is there because Taplow is a short name and therefore prevents addition of extra characters (e.g. changing Barry to Barry Links).

The Maltese Cross is actually associated with the route field and permits a cross-London transfer on the tube.

[inspector_blakey]

There are no single tickets on this flow.

There are Single fares (EOS, EVS) in the retail systems. They're just missing from brfares.com.

For the sake of completeness, I've checked the fares manual and the single fares are:

Route +Via Swindon EOS 79.00, EVS 39.00
Route +Any Permitted EOS 90.50, EVS 43.50

[EBrown]

There are Single fares (EOS, EVS) in the retail systems. They're just missing from brfares.com.

Thanks for letting me know. I don't generally take my fares manual CD^▸ (Capital Delivery) on holiday with me - so that was my only option.

Edit: It's also a pain in the backside for the new MacBook Pro users who have had their CD drives stolen.

[JayMac]

And this highlights one of the problems with publicly available fares information. Many sources (both official and unofficial) that don't always tally.

brfares.com is a great unofficial resource but it's not perfect. So its perfectly understandable that the absence of single fares from this particular flow may be seen as the actual case. I thought that may be case myself after posting my response to grahame where I made mention of single fares (EOS/EVS).

It was only on further investigation that I discovered there were indeed single fares. That investigation comprised of making a specimen booking on the only booking engine that will sell tickets to London International (CIV^▸ (International Convention for the transportation of Passengers)) - raileasy.co.uk. Single fares were available there but I didn't take that as gospel because even booking engines can offer up fares that aren't in the fares database. So I double checked with 'The Manual'. The single fares were listed there, and as that is; 'The official source of retail information for the rail industry' I felt confident to state that single fares are indeed available between Melksham/Chippenham and London International (CIV).

A complex fares system with inconsistencies across official and unofficial sources does rather make life difficult. Just today I discovered a fare that only respottedhankey.com would sell. A fare that all the other official and unofficial sources are adamant doesn't exist. 

[grahame]

The CIV^▸ (International Convention for the transportation of Passengers) ticket is also available, I think, if you buy an international train/ferry ticket from Liverpool Street to Holland which would proably be cheaper than Eurostar.

That's a very old post that I've dredged up and there was some uncertainly as to whether it's still available this way. 

I'm returning by boat rather than by Eurostar (finish in Holland too late to get home by Eurostar; may as well sleep on the boat) ... so I guess I should get the EVR rather that than EVS.

[Worcester_Passenger]

I'm returning by boat rather than by Eurostar (finish in Holland too late to get home by Eurostar; may as well sleep on the boat) ... so I guess I should get the EVR rather that than EVS.

I trust that you found the through fares on the ship : any NS station to any Greater Anglia station.

I say 'ship' on account of it being much much bigger than a 'boat'.

[grahame]

I'm returning by boat rather than by Eurostar (finish in Holland too late to get home by Eurostar; may as well sleep on the boat) ... so I guess I should get the EVR rather that than EVS.

I trust that you found the through fares on the ship : any NS station to any Greater Anglia station.

Yes, though I'm not sure how my receipt translates into a ticket at the obscure NS station I start from - I had to book through the Dutch site because the people in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) only book tickets (singles and returns) originating in the UK.  Why do people go out of their way to put on such restrictions.  Almost temps me to drive!