Why the HELL is it wrong to pay ON the Train???

Andy_L

will.i.amnt wrote: »

Oh, and by the way - no ticket = uninsured.

That train comes off the rails, your arms come off = tough titty.

Now, that WOULD be funny.

Do you have a cite for that piece of law?

System

I started reading this thread and completely understood what the OP was trying to say, and then read on and saw what CKnocker had to say and thought I'd put my own two penn'orth in on the subject.

Over the past 10 years I have made at least 20 journeys without a ticket through no fault of my own, and have usually had the opportunity to right wrongs at my destination station by purchasing a ticket (well, two tickets in fact - for the journey I had made and the return journey). I can count the number of times my return ticket was checked on the fingers of one hand!

The railway companies (in my case, First Great Western) have been doing themselves no favours by not making tickets available for purchase in the first place. I am honest, but many may not be.

Like CKnocker, I live in Cornwall but I travel from a station on a branch line with no staffed stations, and no automated ticket machines. My destination station, Truro, now has proper barriers so you can't leave the station without a ticket. Which is a good thing. However, if there's no-one on the train selling tickets, and you have to buy one before you go through the barrier you have an almighty queue at busy times. This is enormously inconvenient if you have to be at work or at an appointment. Worse still, if you are changing trains and travelling onwards on the main line, you can travel miles before a ticket person comes and then you get in trouble for not buying ticket before boarding.

If the ticket office at Truro is shut, the barriers are usually open and unstaffed, or at least they are late evening. In September, I travelled up to London on the sleeper and pre-booked my Truro to London tickets on line for collection at the Truro ticket machine. I needed to buy my ticket from home to Truro on the train, of course. Pre-ordering a ticket for a journey you make to the ticket machine doesn't work!!!! However, I made that journey with no ticket and as the barriers were open I collected my onward tickets and onward I went.

On my return I went to the ticket office to buy a return ticket for home and thought I'd let him know that one half of the ticket was actually because I hadn't been able to buy one on the train on the previous Tuesday. The ticket office man asked when I was travelling and I said last Tuesday and today but I just wanted a return for today as I owed them for a journey I had made without a ticket. We got there in the end - I think he thought I had a screw loose or something.

So yes, it's annoying and inconvenient when you know that it's perfectly possible to get away with not buying a ticket to travel by train, and yet you try to always travel with a ticket or buy a retrospective one, but you know that there are many folk around you who have the confidence to travel without one as they know they are quite likely to get away with it.

Our little branchline is a godsend and I don't begrudge FGW the 5p increase in my return fare at all, and I will always go out of my way to buy a ticket ... however inconvenient and time-consuming it is, and even if it is four days after I have made the original journey as I would hate for our brilliant twice hourly service to be cut, or worse still have the line closed down, due to lack of revenue.