I was just checking the Live Departure Board on the NationalRail website and noticed that the train I will be on next week, was cancelled today.

What happens in situations like this?

I already bought the ticket. I will be catching Southern Rail from Gatwick to Watford Junction, transferring to Virgin Train to Manchester with about 15 minutes connection time. The two journeys are on one ticket bought from <b>www.thetrainline.com</b>.

Am I to assume that it's a lot like airlines? Will Southern reroute me with a new ticket if they cancel the scheduled train as they did today? Who do I see if the train is cancelled. Is there a National Rail Ticket Office at Gatwick?

I'm not worried, but I never thought of this possibility and it may also be good info for others that are not familiar with rail travel.

Thanks!

What sort of train ticket is it? If you miss the Virgin train, is the ticket valid on the another one? Some types of ticket are valid on many trains while others are only a specified train (these are the ones I avoid buying).
When our trains were all run by one organisation, it was simple, but now things can get very complicated.
There are no &quot;National Rail&quot; ticket offices. Each station is run by a company which is in most cases the company that runs most trains from that station.

Just go to the ticket office, they will fix things for you. The main travel centre is located at the rear of the concourse and is open for tickets 24 hours a day. The information desk is on the concourse and is open between 06.30 and 19.00 for general assistance.

It doesn't really matter who manages the station but, in the case of Gatwick, it is not one of the train companies. Rather, it is Network Rail, which is the owner of the rails, signalling and other infrastructure for the UK rail system.

This is from the printout. I will collect the actual ticket at the Gatwick Station.

<i>Journey 1: Gatwick Airport to Manchester Piccadilly

Ticket Type: Value 3 Day Adv Single

Route: This ticket is only valid for routes passing through Rugby

Followed by date, times, and trains info</i>


So, will Southern be responsible to get me to the final destination if it cancels the train and I miss the Virgin connection?

and who do I see if something like this occurs?

Thanks

<b>ron</b>,

I just saw your post now. Thanks

There is something goofy going on here today!

Ron's right, but aren't the practicalities a bit differerent?

Assuming you're not travelling during scheduled engineeering works, trains usually get cancelled at very short notice (in Virgin's case, 10 mins' notice isn't at all unusual). Even if you mess about at Gatwick with your 3G phone or GPRS card to check the web, chances are the train will still be running when you leave the airport, and the first you'll know about the cancellation is when you get to Watford. Where there might be charming, helpful Virgin staff to sort you out after you've queued up behind the other 700 people also thrown into confusion. Or you can do what everyone else will be doing: just get on the next Glasgow or Liverpool train and change at Stafford (though you might want to wait for a train or two till one arrives that's not totally crowded). I've never seen a ticket inspector attempt to impose a surcharge on anyone under these circumstances.

Your ticket explicitly rules out the real alternative of getting the train from Gatwick to Reading and then changing onto a Machester train. So even were you know about the cancellation at Gatwick, all the staff there could do, after hours of you queueing and them thumbing through the rule books, would be to issue you with a new ticket for the journey you'd have taken, without being challenged, if you'd just turned up at Watford.

As I understood the original question, &quot;AAFrequentFlyer&quot; was worried that the Southern train from Gatwick to Watford Junction might be cancelled, and then he/she would miss the Virgin train to Manchester. If the Virgin train were cancelled, it would obviously be up to Virgin to get booked passengers to Manchester.
As far as I can see, a 3-day advance ticket costs &pound;22 and is only valid on the specified Virgin train (for comparison, a saver valid on most trains is &pound;57.60 and a standard open single is &pound;103.50).
If the Southern train is cancelled, go to the staff at Gatwick and explain your problem. If you miss the Virgin train and have to pay Virgin more to travel to Manchester on another train, then Southern should compensate you if it's their fault.
Note that for any train journey, your ticket is a legal contract and the train companies have an obligation to get you to your destination - even if they have to pay for a taxi (I once had a 100-mile taxi journey paid for by a train company).

Geoff:

You are of course right.

My life is blighted so often by the Bearded Buffoon cancelling trains I'm blind to the possibilty other companies might do it too. AAFF's posting is quite clear about who the guilty party was on this occasion. And clearly, he'd have needed a reissued ticket.

So ignore my meanderings above. If the Fodors snoops are reading this, they'd render us all a service by deleting my bit, which serves no useful purpose.

I was on a Virgin train a few weeks ago and the announcement before leaving Euston station said clearly that if you have a discounted (non full fare) ticket it will be good only on the train indicated on the ticket or full fare will be collected. As for cancellations - they are rife. On the train from London to Edinburgh i was riding recently they announced &quot;that for the next 10 weekends trains between Berwick and Edinburgh were cancelled, with a bus substitution. Opposite me were a couple whose ears perked up at that proclamation. Turns out the guy was a writer for the Sun newspaper and was going to Glasgow to write a travel piece and had been given free first class tickets by the GNE railway we were one - he was going up on a Friday and returning on Sunday. they negelcted to tell him about there being no trains back on Sunday. He went ballistic - he wasn't up for the coach substitution, which made a much longer journey time and got on the phone to confirm with GNE's PR dept that indeed trains had been cancelled. He was incredulous that such a thing had happened but i'm not, not after riding British trains for years - so many bizarre similar incidents. Another one on my recent trip - in suburban London i went to the train station to buy a ticket and the lady said that there were no trains this morning but i could backtrack to another nearby city and get to London from there by a different route. Fine. So i went to platform 2 to catch a train in that direction, along with many other folks, only to hear the announcement: the train approaching platform 1 (where no trains were supposed to come) is the 8:42 for London Victoria - right where i wanted to go - two minutes after the clerk said there would be no trains. So everyone dashes over to platform 1. (It was about 10:30 when the 8:42 came in!)Good luck!

Thanks everybody,

Like I said, I'm not worried. I just wanted to get a general idea of what happens when you buy a &quot;plan-ahead&quot; rail ticket and something goes wrong.

I know a great deal about airfares fare codes, airline ticketing, etc.etc. but when I saw that train cancellation the other day, it just got me thinking and I also realized I don't know very much about UK rail ticketing in particular, (basically because it never failed me) and European rail ticketing rules in general.

I guess it still comes down to good negotiating skills if and when it becomes necessary.