Great Western Coffee Shop

The Association of Train Operating Companies have released two guides to ticketing. The first is an update to previous information on ticket types, their names, validity, discounts available, your rights and responsibilities, how to purchase and so on:

http://www.atoc.org/download/clientfiles/files/LoRES%20NR%20Guide%20to%20Tickets%202013.pdf (can only find a lo res version at the moment)

The second is a guide to forthcoming changes in ticket layout as well as looking at technology to purchase tickets, online journey planners and looking to future smart ticketing option:

http://www.atoc.org/download/clientfiles/files/Your%20ticket%20to%20travel.pdf

The new layout is a bit of a shock when first seen - but I guess it is more customer friendly.

The two examples are both singles, I assume returns will still be issued as two tickets.

A couple of other thoughts.  I notice the date is not "blocked" when it is a date in the future - meaning something else for the staff inspecting tickets to check.  It also seems it will now be one person, one ticket - although to be honest I have never seen the number fields used on the existing ticket. Even when buying a Groupsave I have been issued with three or four tickets, rather than one for the group.

The only time you might be issued with one ticket for several people at the moment is, I believe, when buying from an Avantix machine, so mainly buying on board.

The changes are long overdue since the arrival of the advance purchase ticket has made restrictions so much more complicated, and will hopefully remove some of the confusion over when and where a ticket is valid.

Don't know who has noticed, but they've started printing the two-character fare code on tickets now...

Only some TOCs are doing this at the moment (with the worst culprits for staff not knowing validity being the ones still not printing codes, in my experience).

The ticket stock is now different (well, at least SWT and EMT have now switched).  The BR logo is orange in a white circle, instead of being white.  On the reverse, wording is different and includes a box labelled "Endorsements".  I don't have an example to post, but I will see if I can retrieve one at some stage.

Looking at the PDF guide, I'd like to see the key details appearing on the ticket in upper case (to make them easier to read).  They've also chosen a ticket printed by a TRIBUTE system to compare them to, which has that characteristic rather bold and hard to read text.  I wonder if such a machine will be able to print the new style tickets in that lovely TrueType font without needing a major upgrade.....

Chiltern have also changed over.