Integrated rail transport

[Noel]

Was watching this the other day, reminded me once upon a time you could buy a rail ticket from Amiens street to Paddington in London via B&I ferry platform on the Carisle pier in Dub Laoghaire and BR at Holly head. I guess the channel tunnel rail link has made such redundant or uneconomic, but just shows was was possible back in the day.

 

[Broithe]

I was still using a Stafford to Ballybrophy ticket, via Irish Ferries (Holyhead to North Wall) until late 2008, when the journey on the Big island just got too long-winded and difficult to cope with.

As far as I know, you can still get such a ticket.

I had started doing the journey via Stena to DL, then the Dart to Tara Street and the bus to Heuston, initially on the ferry, but then on the HSS - but a few "events" on the HSS led me to try the alternative crossing.

[Noel]

1 hour ago, Broithe said:

I was still using a Stafford to Ballybrophy ticket, via Irish Ferries (Holyhead to North Wall) until late 2008, when the journey on the Big island just got too long-winded and difficult to cope with.

As far as I know, you can still get such a ticket.

I had started doing the journey via Stena to DL, then the Dart to Tara Street and the bus to Heuston, initially on the ferry, but then on the HSS - but a few "events" on the HSS led me to try the alternative crossing.

Yes HSS is no more, Concord is no more, Space Shuttle is no more, transport seems to be going backwards. It was impressive to get train to a platform on Dun Laoghaire pier, walk directly onto Ferry, cross the Irish sea, walk off onto platform at Holyhead and board a rake of BR Mk2 coaches behind a class 37 bound for London. Thanks to southwest airlines introducing the world to low cost air fares which put clean modes of transport such as rail and ferries out of business.

[jhb171achill]

The reality is that inter-connectivity of SOME transport routes nowadays is very far from top priority. Things do change over the years. The apparent lack of any attempt at connecting foot passengers on Welsh ferries at Rosslare, with trains, or even a bus to Dublin, is well-known and much commented on, but the reality - whether any of us enthusiasts like it or not - is that only a miniscule percentage of passengers on that line are going to Wales, and an even more miniscule amount of passengers on the ferry don't have cars or are passengers in minibuses.

I, too, recall when you could get a ticket from anywhere in Ireland to anywhere in Europe - Senior, in the 1950s, was able to get tickets by train from anywhere in Ireland to a specific rural location in Austria. But the plane and the car have pushed these to the bottom of the list; I would say enjoy what journeys are possible this way while any of us can!

[hexagon789]

7 hours ago, Broithe said:

As far as I know, you can still get such a ticket.

You can still get SailRail tickets from any GB stations to any station in Ireland routed via the ferries from Holyhead

They are £51.10 in the UK or €60 in Ireland for London/Dublin for example.

Further destinations are slightly more expensive, but a ~£5/€5 discount can be had by booking them in advance.

 

Stafford-Ballybrophy comes to £66.40/£71.60 presently.

 

[jhb171achill]

3 minutes ago, hexagon789 said:

You can still get SailRail tickets from any GB stations to any station in Ireland routed via the ferries from Holyhead

They are £51.10 in the UK or €60 in Ireland for London/Dublin for example.

That's actually pretty reasonable!

[hexagon789]

16 minutes ago, jhb171achill said:

That's actually pretty reasonable!

Surprisingly!

[Broithe]

I was once booking my ticket and a chap at the next window was booking a ticket to Milton Keynes and he was charged more, despite Holyhead alone being further than MK was from Stafford.

[hexagon789]

Just now, Broithe said:

I was once booking my ticket and a chap at the next window was booking a ticket to Milton Keynes and he was charged more, despite Holyhead alone being further than MK was from Stafford.

Each station in GB is charged on the basis of which zone in fits in rather than precise distance or route for the purpose of SailRail.

Stafford is in Zone B, while Milton Keynes (as is London) is in Zone E.

The higher the letter, the higher the fare.

Zone B is £42/£47.50 to/from Dublin, £66.40/£71.60 to/from anywhere else in Ireland.

Zone E is £46.10/£51.90 and £70.50/£76.80 respectively.

The lower figure is Advance booked, the higher figure is the walk-up fare.

The highest possible fare is £80.90, a walk-up Great Britain Zone E to 'Not Dublin' via Irish Ferries Swift SeaCat (which charges a slight premium over the Ulysses sailings).

 

And now I've spent more than enough time in the quagmire of the GB Fares Database, so I bid you all a good night!

 

 

 

[Broithe]

10 hours ago, hexagon789 said:

Each station in GB is charged on the basis of which zone in fits in rather than precise distance or route for the purpose of SailRail.

Stafford is in Zone B, while Milton Keynes (as is London) is in Zone E.

The higher the letter, the higher the fare.

Zone B is £42/£47.50 to/from Dublin, £66.40/£71.60 to/from anywhere else in Ireland.

Zone E is £46.10/£51.90 and £70.50/£76.80 respectively.

The lower figure is Advance booked, the higher figure is the walk-up fare.

The highest possible fare is £80.90, a walk-up Great Britain Zone E to 'Not Dublin' via Irish Ferries Swift SeaCat (which charges a slight premium over the Ulysses sailings).

 

And now I've spent more than enough time in the quagmire of the GB Fares Database, so I bid you all a good night!

 

 

 

His ticket was just Stafford to Milton Keynes, no boat involved.

 

This was when Stafford - Ballybrophy was still £45, back in the 90's, his ticket was a few quid above that.

[hexagon789]

1 hour ago, Broithe said:

His ticket was just Stafford to Milton Keynes, no boat involved.

Apologies, I thought you meant he was doing Ballybrophy to MK!

 

 

[Broithe]

22 minutes ago, hexagon789 said:

Apologies, I thought you meant he was doing Ballybrophy to MK!

It would have been about the same price, I think...

[hexagon789]

12 minutes ago, Broithe said:

It would have been about the same price, I think...

Probably

[Broithe]

On the Big Island, there are huge anomalies in the prices of tickets and it's often cheaper to book a single journey as a number of stages. A friend of mine has turned this into an art-form.

This is his greatest triumph - Stafford to Portsmouth return, with 36 pieces of cardboard to achieve the lowest total fare.

Only one change of train, and the same booked seat on each of the two trains.

'They' do spend a bit of time trying to undo the way round the higher prices - it used to be cheaper to buy a ticket to the next station past Gatwick Airport stop, and just get off there instead, one stop early. So many people did this that they made it an offence to do so...

[hexagon789]

Just now, Broithe said:

On the Big Island, there are huge anomalies in the prices of tickets and it's often cheaper to book a single journey as a number of stages. A friend of mine has turned this into an art-form.

This is his greatest triumph - Stafford to Portsmouth return, with 36 pieces of cardboard to achieve the lowest total fare.

Only one change of train, and the same booked seat on each of the two trains.

'They' do spend a bit of time trying to undo the way round the higher prices - it used to be cheaper to buy a ticket to the next station past Gatwick Airport stop, and just get off there instead, one stop early. So many people did this that they made it an offence to do so...

It is offence to stop short on advance tickets, nothing against it on walk-up tickets as break-of-journey is allowed with those.

Going further though... that's another matter.

Most split-ticket anomalies have been removed in Scotland a few years ago, but in England & Wales there are quite a few still about.

There are a couple of good websites that will figure out the splits for you.

[Ironroad]

19 hours ago, jhb171achill said:

The reality is that inter-connectivity of SOME transport routes nowadays is very far from top priority. Things do change over the years. The apparent lack of any attempt at connecting foot passengers on Welsh ferries at Rosslare, with trains, or even a bus to Dublin, is well-known and much commented on, but the reality - whether any of us enthusiasts like it or not - is that only a miniscule percentage of passengers on that line are going to Wales, and an even more miniscule amount of passengers on the ferry don't have cars or are passengers in minibuses.

I, too, recall when you could get a ticket from anywhere in Ireland to anywhere in Europe - Senior, in the 1950s, was able to get tickets by train from anywhere in Ireland to a specific rural location in Austria. But the plane and the car have pushed these to the bottom of the list; I would say enjoy what journeys are possible this way while any of us can!

It's not just the interconnectivity of rail services that is ignored. Busaras in Dublin is over sixty years in existence and is sited across the street from Connolly Station, yet in all that time the concept of providing a simple elevated pedestrian walkway linking both terminals does not seem to have occurred to anyone. 

[hexagon789]

20 minutes ago, Ironroad said:

It's not just the interconnectivity of rail services that is ignored. Busaras in Dublin is over sixty years in existence and is sited across the street from Connolly Station, yet in all that time the concept of providing a simple elevated pedestrian walkway linking both terminals does not seem to have occurred to anyone. 

Not just in Ireland; asides from similar examples here in Scotland, I can think of a few similar instances in France, in Spain and even in the usually decently integrated Netherlands, where I found buses and trains seemed to treat each other as a disease to be avoided and hidden from each other at all costs!

Local planning is something so many places just don't seem to consider properly, if indeed at all.

Pity.

[Broithe]

Stafford, with 70,000 people and a mainline railway station, did have a bus station of sorts at the railway station car park, this was removed in the early 70s, for extra parking, and replaced with a small bus stop across the road - and many other bus stops scattered around the town, where some services started or stopped, if you knew what went where, but there was no system and it changed all the time.

Around 2010, I was approached by two Arabic-looking lads, trying to find where to get a bus to the hospital, for interviews for jobs. I could see that they had already asked a few people and got no answer. They clearly suspected that people were being deliberately unhelpful, but I explained that there was no 'system', it was just up to you to know the current 'secret' about where any bus might go from. When I explained that Stafford really didn't have a bus station, one of them said to me "We're from Mosul. We've been bombed for twenty years and we still have a bus station!".

I took them a couple of hundred yards to a bus shelter and asked an old dear there where they should go - she told me and we set off another quarter of a mile to an obscure stop, which turned out to be right.

I hope they got the jobs.

 

Edited October 19, 2022 by Broithe

[airfixfan]

Reading in latest Rail Magazine about a man who wanted to travel from London to Barrow. Found it cheaper to fly London to Dublin then Dublin to Manchester and save about 300 £ as well!

[Broithe]

8 minutes ago, airfixfan said:

Reading in latest Rail Magazine about a man who wanted to travel from London to Barrow. Found it cheaper to fly London to Dublin then Dublin to Manchester and save about 300 £ as well!

There are many examples of this sort of diversion.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/arid-20378679.html

A Plane Replacement Service..?

[hexagon789]

11 minutes ago, airfixfan said:

Reading in latest Rail Magazine about a man who wanted to travel from London to Barrow. Found it cheaper to fly London to Dublin then Dublin to Manchester and save about 300 £ as well!

Given a walk-up is £87, I wonder how that works?

[Broithe]

Last time I flew to Prague from Birmingham, around 2010, admittedly, it was £12 for the return trip.

It was £11:70 for the Stafford-Birmingham International return trip.

[airfixfan]

Details are in Rail he paid 32£ instead of a fare of over 300£

[hexagon789]

8 minutes ago, airfixfan said:

Details are in Rail he paid 32£ instead of a fare of over 300£

He wanted an Amytime Open Return, the most expensive option. Outward portion is valid for 5 days at any time of day, the return is valid for up to one month with unlimited break of journey opportunities.

If he'd even been prepared to limit to off-peak, it would've been £124 for a return.

Also the £33 covers him getting to Barrow, there is no mention of cost nor journey details coming back...