On 18 Dec, 11:47, (Neil Williams)
wrote:

On Wed, 17 Dec 2008 16:21:20 -0000, "Paul Scott"
wrote:
Could THIS possibly be the background to that odd Evening Standard story a
week or two back about Virgin Offpeak change?

The only other one I can see is that they seem to have added peak
northbound restrictions at MKC (for some odd reason a wider window
than Euston, as well - 1500 to 1900, not about 1600 to 1900 like you
might expect if it's mean to be the same trains) which didn't
previously exist.


Perhaps this is to stop people splitting tickets - or rather more
accurately, splitting their journey, i.e. LM from Euston to Milton
Keynes, then change and catch Virgin on from there. Have they done the
same at Watford Junction I wonder?

Splitting a journey like that is certainly something I'd be willing to
do - or to have done. I wonder if Virgin analyses the tickets they
sell online (if Trainline can and does provide each TOC with a branded
booking engine a breakdown), or indeed the tickets collected from
their Fasticket machines (that may indeed have been sold by another
online booking service), so as to look out for trends in ticket
splitting? Of course they can also look at the levels of 'any
permitted' ticket sales (both their own sales and also across the
industry) on routes they serve and attempt to read some conclusions
from that as well.

(It is indeed odd that the MKC restriction starts at 1500 not 1600.)