Easements (revisited?)

[whole diary]

[grahame]

An "Easement" is an exception to the routing guide for tickets - where following the general rules laid down for which routes can be followed has been officially judged to be a bit silly. 

For example,

30262
Customers travelling Southampton Airport Parkway and North thereof to Bitterne and beyond may double back between St Denys and Southampton Central. This easement applies both directions.

allows passengers from Southampton Airport to places like Hamble to change trains at Southampton Central, even though the it would be a shorter journey if they changed at St Denys, where the lines from Southampton Airport and Hamble come together for the final couple of miles into Central.  The easement make sense, because lots of trains don't call at St Denys and making people change there could result in some very long waits, but the general rules don't allow passengers to go back and forth over the same line.

The list of easements is at http://www.atoc.org/clientfiles/files/easements.pdf if you want to take a look; although it refers to updates (which occur from time to time), there's no date on this file.  I would appreciate if someone with industry knowledge could let me know if it's the current version (and if not, where I can find the current version!)

Another sensible one:

30074
Journeys from Castle Cary, Bruton and Frome to Pewsey and beyond may travel via Westbury. This easement applies in both directions.

Allows passengers from the Somerset end of the Berks and Hants to change at Westbury for Pewsey.  Through trains are allowed anyway, but as Westbury station is off the direct line, using a Weymouth line local into Westbury and changing there wouldn't be allowed without the easement.

Be aware that there are some negative easements ...

700042
Customers travelling from Castle Cary to Bristol Temple Meads and beyond may not travel via Taunton. This easement applies in both directions.

30234
Customers travelling from Edinburgh to Wellingborough may not travel via London St Pancras. This easement applies in both directions.

30219
Customers travelling from London to Heysham Port may not travel via Douglas Isle of Man. This easements applies in both directions.

700042 here is disappointing - to my untutored  view, it would seem to be perfectly reasonable for people from Castle Cary to be allowed one stop to Taunton, then 1 stop on an express to get them into Bristol.   Far quicker than a through but infrequent and local train with 9 intermediate stops.

Some easements have me scratching my head - seemingly allowing things that are pretty darned obvious.  Are they there just to fix flaws in the way the general rules are set out, or have I missed something?

30114
Journeys from Melksham via Bedwyn may travel via Westbury. This easement applies in both directions.

30012
Journeys to or from South Greenford, Castle Bar Park, Drayton Green, Hanwell, Acton Mainline, Ealing Broadway, West Ealing, Hayes and Harlington and West Drayton to Reading and beyond may travel via Slough. This easement applies in both directions.

30020
Journeys from Moreton in Marsh, Kingham, Shipton, Ascott under Wychwood, Charlbury, Finstock, Combe and Hanborough to Reading and beyond may travel via Oxford. This easement applies in both directions.

30044
Journeys from Charlbury, Finstock, Combe and Hanborough to station north of Banbury may travel via Oxford. This easement applies in both directions.

30046
Journeys from Totnes, Paignton, Torquay, Torre, Newton Abbot, Teignmouth, Dawlish, Dawlish Warren and Starcross to stations north of Tiverton Parkway may travel via Exeter St David's. This easement applies in both directions.

300358
Customer travelling to stations on the Marlow and Henley on Thames lines via Didcot Parkway may travel via Reading. This easement applies in both directions.

300393
Customers travelling via Norwich using fares routed Irish Ferries may travel via Norwich.

I can't imagine - 30046 - how you could get from south of Exeter St. David's to north of Exeter St David's without passing through Exeter St Davids!


Suggestion - if you make a journey where you feel that the journey you're making is awkward due to railway geography or timetabling,  search the easements and see if someone's been there before and added an exception to the rules in for you.

[ChrisB]

The list of easements is at http://www.atoc.org/clientfiles/files/easements.pdf if you want to take a look; although it refers to updates (which occur from time to time), there's no date on this file.  I would appreciate if someone with industry knowledge could let me know if it's the current version (and if not, where I can find the current version!)

I'll be surprised if that's the current list - atoc doesn't exist any more - you need to be looking at the Rail Delivery Group website which superceded ATOC^» (Association of Train Operating Companies See - here).

Be aware that there are some negative easements ...

700042
Customers travelling from Castle Cary to Bristol Temple Meads and beyond may not travel via Taunton. This easement applies in both directions.

700042 here is disappointing - to my untutored  view, it would seem to be perfectly reasonable for people from Castle Cary to be allowed one stop to Taunton, then 1 stop on an express to get them into Bristol.   Far quicker than a through but infrequent and local train with 9 intermediate stops.

Would be far more expensive too, and likely involve XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise)) for some journeys. Maybe they couldn't agree a fare/fare split?

Suggestion - if you make a journey where you feel that the journey you're making is awkward due to railway geography or timetabling,  search the easements and see if someone's been there before and added an exception to the rules in for you.

The easements are all programmed into the route planners, so putting your journey into one of those will give you all the permutations available.

[stuving]

ATOC^» (Association of Train Operating Companies See - here) still exists, at least as a server for the routeing guide in text format. (RDG^‡(resolve) handles the data feeds for it.) The current easements text file (dated 1/9/2017) is at http://iblocks-rg-publication.s3-website-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/easement_text.pdf.

PS: The routeing guide front page is at http://data.atoc.org/routeing-guide, which links to the various files. As you can see, these are really served from elsewhere, so data.toc.org is now just a link page (and atoc.org redirects to raildeliverygroup.com).

[Fourbee]

I am looking for NFM^▸ (National Fares Manual) 28 (Avantix^▸ (Ticket Issuing System used on board trains) Traveller) from that page as well, but it's not there yet (well, yesterday when I checked).

[Worcester_Passenger]

I am looking for NFM^▸ (National Fares Manual) 28 (Avantix^▸ (Ticket Issuing System used on board trains) Traveller) from that page as well, but it's not there yet (well, yesterday when I checked).

My copy of Avantix Traveller has stopped working - it displays a message saying

    This app can't run on your PC
    To find a version for your PC, check with the software publisher.

I'm running Windows 10, but I've had the compatibility settings set toWindows 8 for this program - and it's been working happily up to now. Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

[Fourbee]

I'm running Windows 7, which isn't much help.

Oracle VirtualBox could help though. I use it to run a few VMs for backwards compatibility, if your PC is decent-ish you should be OK.

[Bmblbzzz]

30074
Journeys from Castle Cary, Bruton and Frome to Pewsey and beyond may travel via Westbury. This easement applies in both directions.

I presume this is an easement because of the Westbury avoiding line. But how is the non-geeky traveller supposed to know about the existence of such a thing? To most passengers, Westbury will simply be the next station after Frome before Pewsey.

More generally, I'm wondering about "via". To me it simply means "travelling through this place" but perhaps it has a specific railway usage for changing trains at a particular station?

[stuving]

A lot of these blindingly obvious examples are labelled as "Routeing Point" easements. In principle that means it corrects a quirk in the set-up of station groups and routeing points in the guide which gives funny results. However, I suspect that a lot of these have now been fixed, but no-one has bothered to take out the easement as it does no harm - well, actually it has no effect at all.

My understanding as that, unlike the other parts of the Routeing Guide, the easements exist as independent text and code (for ticketing engines to use). Presumably any such fossilised ones must survive in both forms, since otherwise it would to very easy to remove the text ones. But you'd need to be familiar with the data feeds to know that (which I'm not).

[JayMac]

Another sensible one:

30074
Journeys from Castle Cary, Bruton and Frome to Pewsey and beyond may travel via Westbury. This easement applies in both directions.

Allows passengers from the Somerset end of the Berks and Hants to change at Westbury for Pewsey.  Through trains are allowed anyway, but as Westbury station is off the direct line, using a Weymouth line local into Westbury and changing there wouldn't be allowed without the easement.

It appears sensible, but is only necessary for the programming of booking engines. The Routeing Guide already allows the route without consulting the Easements section. For example, Bruton to Pewsey via Westbury is a mapped route. No need to look for an easement.

Also, for east<->west routeing purposes, Westbury is a single routeing point covering both the station and avoiding line. 

[CyclingSid]

What are Club 55 products?

700062
Customers travelling from Mortimer and Bramley via Newbury and in possession of Club 55 products, may travel via Reading West. This easement applies in both directions

From http://iblocks-rg-publication.s3-website-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/easement_text.pdf.

[stuving]

What are Club 55 products?

700062
Customers travelling from Mortimer and Bramley via Newbury and in possession of Club 55 products, may travel via Reading West. This easement applies in both directions

From http://iblocks-rg-publication.s3-website-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/easement_text.pdf.

Club 55 are or have been promotional tickets for almost-oldies run at various times by some TOCs^▸ (Train Operating Company). Scotrail have done this more than once, but now have Club 50 (20% off, but you have to join). ATW^▸ (Arriva Trains Wales (former TOC)) were offering some return tickets for £26 earlier this year as "Club 55".

The easement is both historical (been there since 2012 if not before) and weird - covering the quirks, I'm sure.

[TaplowGreen]

I remember Canadian Club, but I thought it was Britvic 55?

[ChrisB]

FGW^▸ (First Great Western) as was, took part on occasion too