Railway question

Angel747

Hello,

I hope im asking in the right place

We are going on holiday in December, and want to travel by train. We leave mid December, and if the weather is like last year, it could be snowing.
What happens if this is the case and i have pre booked tickets? We are in the South West and going to Heathrow, and i was going to book the tickets the 12 weeks in advance, but ive had the horrible thought about waking up the morning we are travelling to snow, and not being able to get to the airport. Do trains still run in snow, or would they put on buses to replace them, or do they just not run?

Thank you for any help/advice.

phatbear

A few points:

This is the overseas holiday section, so your post is'nt really in the right place
There are too many variables to answer that question, depends on depth of snow, how quick the train company can clear it, re buses depends on the same variables as as the trains.
Just make sure you've got travel insurance then deal with the situ if it comes up

jammin_2

Don't forget travel insurance.

Angel747

phatbear wrote: »

A few points:

This is the overseas holiday section, so your post is'nt really in the right place
There are too many variables to answer that question, depends on depth of snow, how quick the train company can clear it, re buses depends on the same variables as as the trains.
Just make sure you've got travel insurance then deal with the situ if it comes up

Sorry if i put this in the wrong place, we are going abroad (from Heathrow) which is why i put it here
I have travel insurance i will check we are covered, but that wont help if we are stuck in Cornwall. Think i may need to go to the train station and ask there then.

richardw

Perhaps book the train for the day before the flight and stay in a hotel at heathrow.

phatbear

And you are'nt taking into account the fact that the flight itself may be cancelled!!

Dont stress about it!!!

johnnyroper

Angel747 wrote: »

Hello,

I hope im asking in the right place

We are going on holiday in December, and want to travel by train. We leave mid December, and if the weather is like last year, it could be snowing.
What happens if this is the case and i have pre booked tickets? We are in the South West and going to Heathrow, and i was going to book the tickets the 12 weeks in advance, but ive had the horrible thought about waking up the morning we are travelling to snow, and not being able to get to the airport. Do trains still run in snow, or would they put on buses to replace them, or do they just not run?

Thank you for any help/advice.

i work for FGW which will be the TOC that you will use from cornwall to heathrow (well reading or padd) and during last years snow the vast majority of services ran especially on the main line high speed services.
personally i would just roll with it and see what happens on the day,as said above best thing to do is travel up day before and stay over that way you get there in plenty of time and have a stress free start to the holiday.

joerugby

johnnyroper wrote: »

i work for FGW which will be the TOC that you will use from cornwall to heathrow (well reading or padd) and during last years snow the vast majority of services ran especially on the main line high speed services.
personally i would just roll with it and see what happens on the day,as said above best thing to do is travel up day before and stay over that way you get there in plenty of time and have a stress free start to the holiday.

We used FGW to LHR last dec for a holiday with advance tickets. Outward was fine but return flight was delayed 24 hrs due to snow.

FGW made us buy new tickets. They said that advance tickets were unsuitable for a journey such as this and we should have bought flexible tickets.

BA said their their responsibility stopped at LHR.

Direct Line might have paid up but there was a £30x2 excess and the new tickets were £66.

We had to pay!

We will not use advance tickets for this kind of journey in future.

Angel747

Thank you everyone for your kind replies.

We dont want to travel up the day before - our flight is at 10.30pm so we should have plenty of time to get there, its nice to know that the trains still ran last year.

I have also been a bit worried about the flight being late/cancelled, i think going up wont make a difference (apart from hanging around until the next available flight) but coming back could be, so with joerugby's advise i think i will look into flexible return tickets, just in case.

Thank you all again.

claire16c

FGW are the most appalling company ever. So I would definitely buy flexible tickets just to avoid having to have any kind of conversation with them.