Travelling to Scalefour: the expedition

[jon price]

Having thought I would never get to Scaleforum, living as I do on the middle of Hadrian's Wall I found out that we will be at Northampton at just the right time. Should be easy to get to from there I thought. For £31.35 with a wrinklypass I can get the train via London in only 3.5 hours. I would need to set of at 7.05 to arrive mid morning though. Or there is another route. With skills honed by years on the interwebs (and even before) I found that setting off in the opposite direction will be cheaper (£25.85 for the two return tickets I will need) and in principle much more entertaining from a railway point of view, especially as some of the connections are only 5 or 6 minutes. Anyone with experience of these services prepared to comment on viability? The route is as offered by the National Rail Timetable as follows:
depart from Northampton 7.37, to Coventry (15 minute connection), to Leamington Spa (9 minute connection) to Princes Risborough (33 minute connection) to Aylsbury 10.21
return from Aylsbury 16.29, to Princes Risborough (42 minute connection), to Banbury (5 minute connection), to Leamington Spa (48 minute connection), to Coventry (6 minute connection), to Rugby (10 minute connection), to Northampton 20.12

[John Palmer]

The National Rail planner confirms that yours is a perfectly valid itinerary, though I can't see how you arrive at a connection time of only 5 minutes at Banbury. I get:

Banbury arr. 1804 dep. 1857
Coventry arr. 1925 dep. 1948
Northampton arr. 2020

No changes required on the Coventry-Northampton leg via the London Midland New Street-Euston service.

Can't match your prices, as I can only get £21.60 per head on a senior railcard for an off-peak return, with no better price being revealed for split tickets, according to the Transplit website.

[jon price]

Ah. You presumably looked for a direct route from Aylesbury to Coventry for the return? I originally searched on Northampton to Aylesbury return and was intrigued to see the Coventry/Leamington route listed for the out section (although without a ticket price), but nothing returning that way, so I split the journey without really knowing what the current network looks like (having a map of the LNWR in 1910 didn't help me). I searched on return from Norhampton to Leamington (£14.70 return), and return from Leamington to Aylsbury (£11.15 return). The trains from Banbury at 1824 and 18.37 don't stop at Leamington Spa, and so I would presumably have fallen under the arcane rule that even if your two tickets add up to the complete journey you can't use them unless the train stops at the intermediate ticketing point. I can't understand why I wasnt offered the 19.48 from Coventry to Northampton though.

Your £22.45 beats my £25.85 for a better connecting route so it looks like that is the one to go for.

Just goes to show that to buy a suitable railway ticket these days you now need a team of railway enthusiasts to work on the problem...

[John Palmer]

Actually, I fed 'via Leamington Spa' rather than 'via Coventry' into the National Rail planner to come up with the itinerary on which I was relying. I agree it's very odd the 1948 dep. Coventry didn't come up for you, but if you were specifying the split point for your journey yourself then possibly that might account for it.

That £21.60 fare, being an off-peak return and apparently not an advance fare, doesn't suffer the disadvantage of advance tickets that it's for use on the specified trains only, and thus has the advantage of greater flexibility should you wish to vary your travel times.

I entirely agree about the complexity of train ticket purchasing these days, with the added risk that if you make a mistake you may find yourself exposed to a Bylaw prosecution or worse. As a precaution, these days I will take with me a printed copy of my itinerary as generated by the National Rail website, as this may help to demonstrate that I'm on a permitted route with adquate time to make my connections where a change is required.

[Terry Bendall]

Sound like you have it sorted Jon and we look forward to seeing you. It is always encouraging when members take these sorts of steps to get to our exhibitions.

Terry Bendall

[David Bigcheeseplant]

I wonder if it would be quicker and maybe cheaper to get a train from Northampton to Tring and get a bus to Aylesbury.