My experience with British train from Bath to York

I do find it surprising that you didn't realise that you would need to change stations in London if taking that route. A rather simpler route would have been to take a train from Bath to Bristol Temple Meads station in about 15 minutes and change to a direct train to York. There is also an alternative route changing at Reading which would also not have involved changing stations. The route via London is usually the quickest but as you found more inconvenient with the need to change stations.

Did you think all trains to all destinations begin and end at Paddington?

For context there are 334 railway stations in London. These include 14 major railway termini. You may well have to arrive at one termini and then go to another one for your connection, like changing airports.

But you didn’t need to go to London at all.

I do the Paddington to King’s Cross transfer regularly as I have to travel from Cornwall to York. I prefer it to the cross country route via Bristol. The transfer is an easy 20 minutes.

Did you buy the tickets in advance? I did this trip 2 years ago and bought my ticket from the LNER website to get the advance purchase price. The email they sent listed the stations and clearly specified London Paddington and London Kings Cross on successive lines.

I don't remember being particularly rushed. But having never been there before I found King Cross station a little perplexing since I arrived at the tube station portion and then had to figure out where the train lines were. All part of the adventure in travel!

Hi, J@p28al, thanks for sharing your experience here. That's good to know, although I'm sorry that it was not ideal for you. But hopefully that will help a later traveler who has questions about taking the train from Bath to York.

Next time, you might want to come here to the forum early and post your train route and get some advice. We have a number of UK residents and frequent travelers who are more than happy to share their time and expertise and know the train system very well. I've been to the UK four different times and I still come here with questions, especially about the trains. 😊

For example, you could ask the question, "I am traveling from Bath to York by train. What is the most efficient and easiest train to take?" Hopefully you would get a number of responses from some of the folks here letting you know that you do not have to go through London to get from Bath to York.

Another option is to use Google Maps just to get a starting reference. For example, when I went to Google Maps just now and keyed in York as my destination and Bath as my starting point and asked for directions using public transportation, Google showed me that there are a number of train routes that go through London, but it also showed me a CrossCountry route that goes from Bath to York without stopping in London.

Once you have that, you could come here and ask for more details on it, or just go to the CrossCountry website and look for more information about that route. And as Johnnew52 mentioned above, you could have taken a train to Bristol and then a direct route to York from there. So there are lots of options. 😊

I dont understand why the station change using the Underground came as a surprise to you. When looking online, the journey details that outlined this (including which Underground lines to take) were available at each step in the booking process if you started on the National Rail site. And there was no need to feel rushed, since you had about 45 minutes for a Tube ride that likely takes 15-20 minutes.

Mardeees suggestion to come here before booking tickets on an unfamiliar rail system would likely avoid unecessary anxiety. I'd also recommend spending some time familiarizing yourself with the information on The Man in Seat 61 website.

A rather simpler route would have been to take a train from Bath to Bristol Temple Meads station in about 15 minutes and change to a direct train to York.

So this raises the question - would any of the railroad portals offer this as a viable itinerary, or do you have to know enough to game the system?

It's not a secret - it comes up on nationalrail.co.uk, the go to site, along with options via London and Reading.

London is a massive city and does not have one central railway station. When we invented the railways, the historic centre of London was already built up. Different railway companies in the 1800’s built lines heading out from London to various parts of the country. The London termini would be on those sides of the core area facing in directions from which those lines were heading; so, for example, Paddington was for the Great Western Railway heading out west whilst King’s Cross was for the LNER (London & North Eastern Railway) heading north to York and the eastern side of Scotland. Linking these stations & others is the underground.

The general advice given on here regarding Bath to York is not to go via London due to the hassle of crossing London with baggage but to go to Bristol (Temple Meads) and then change for direct trains all the way to York. Another thing to note is that by splitting the fares, that big savings can be made on such a journey and some websites tell you how to do this - but charge a commission on the amount saved. (nationalrail.co.uk does NOT tell you about this cheaper way off doing it).

Test out these sites for such a journey in say 3 weeks time and see what options/prices they offer.
https://trainsplit.com/
https://www.buytickets.scotrail.co.uk (Yes, I know you are not travelling on Scotrail for such a journey. Note that they only come up with 1 split but don't charge commission).

If going via Bristol, the bulk of the journey will be on > https://www.crosscountrytrains.co.uk - but again, their site does not tell you the savings that can be made by splitting the ticket(s).

It sounds like at least one of us should post the great documentaries and books about the history of the London tube and the British rail system in the recommended reading section here on the forum. You might guess that I especially enjoy the shows that give due credit to American inventors, investors, and manufacturers for the successes of the Tube!
[Managers, too, of course]

Different railway companies in the 1800’s built lines heading out from London to various parts of the country

Same happened in many US cities, where trains were later often consolidated into a single “Union” station.

One of the 'great' (I use that word advisedly) names in the history and development of the London Tube was the American entrepreneur, Charles Yerkes (famously of the Chicago 'El')- https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/collections/stories/people/charles-tyson-yerkes-unscrupulous-american-businessman-who-transformed

In the UK we too have 'Union' stations- we just don't call them that. One of the best examples is Carlisle (formally called Carlisle Citadel), which was built as one station to serve 7 different companies, replacing several different stations.
To this day many people, including railwaymen refer to the 8 platforms by their original user company names (and by and large are still only used by the trains on that route).

Many other cities have done the same, consolidated into one station.

But that would be impossible in a city like London. However, London does have a through station (as well as Thameslink and the Elizabeth Line), now used more than it ever was, but little known- Kensington Olympia. It opened originally as long ago as 1844, and now only has the tube, the overground and Southern Railways trains. However in it's day it had through main line trains, and was the London motorail station (where you could put your car onto a train for long distance transport to Wales, Cornwall and Scotland). General Eisenhower used it in 1944 and it was the cold war evacuation station for civil servants if the worst had ever happened.

You can actually still rent a car from the former Motorail section of Olympia, which I think is a nice nod to it's past.

Regarding Charles Yerkes, there was a rail station named for a neighborhood (formerly a village) in Montgomery County on the way between Philadelphia and Allentown, but looking it up now, it was another member of the Yerkes clan (Isaac) in Pennsylvania, not Charles, that it was named after.

Good example of how google can't help so much with pre-electronic archives. The route is now a trail called the Perkiomen Trail that follows the former bed of the Perkiomen Railroad, which began operations in 1868.

Passenger service ended in 1955, by which time is was part of Reading Railroad. It reopened as a trail in 2003, and Yerkes Station is now a waypoint on the trail. I remember seeing the signage for the station when I was a kid; did not realize that it was not in service.

It's not a secret - it comes up on nationalrail.co.uk, the go to site,
along with options via London and Reading.

It used to be that on nationalrail.co.uk you could tick a box "avoid London". Don't see that anymore. Was a useful option.

Especially since avoiding London also saves a lot of money. Eg. I needed to get from Gatwick to Southampton. Going via London Waterloo is quickest, but South first and then West was only a tad slower, but a lot cheaper...

WengenK - the following site does have an ‘Avoid London’ option - just select Advanced Options and tick the box.https://www.traintickets.com/?/

Yes, i really find it more exhausting and heavy to luggage my luggage up the stairs (no elevator) in a hurry upon my arrival from Paddington station and then rush to take underground tube in order to go to King Cross to catch another train for York destination. Very exhausting.

To my embarrassment, I didn't check thoroughly (didn't click 1 or 2 change" on National Railway website which I didn't notice earlier and only focused on prices and chose cheaper prices without clicking "1 or 2 changes" to find out more. The printed email show only Paddington and King Cross.

Thanks a million for wonderful and valuable and useful tips - cross-country and ticket split and Google Maps. :D