Great Western Coffee Shop

A few days ago I travelled from Patchway to Bracknell and had a major problem as I managed to get to my destination without buying a ticket. I should point out that I made numerous attempts to purchase however.

I boarded a Cardiff-Taunton service at Patchway which would give me only 9 minutes at BRI to connect to a Reading bound service. On the approach to BRI I sought out the Conductor to buy my ticket, but she had already packed her kit away as she was going off duty at BRI. She said I could buy at the gateline. We arrived into BRI 2 mins late, so I instead went straight to the next train, deciding to seek out the TM on departure. She never appeared from the back of coach A until after Swindon (I walked from E to A twice, and asked at the buffet who told me she would be through before Reading). She did appear after SWI, and walked past me to the buffet. I followed her and asked to buy my ticket, explaining where I had boarded. She went back to coach A to get her Avantix, but returned saying she couldn't power it up and told me to get my ticket a Reading.
Now, on arrival at RDG, if things are on time, I can make a connection to Bracknell, which departs 3 mins after the BRI-PAD train arrives. I went straight to platform 4B and boarded. I didn't seek out the conductor on this occasion as they just hide in the cabs in the middle of the train where the 2 units are joined.
I got to Bracknell and entered a world of pain! Gateline were unprepared to believe that, despite numerous attempts, I had managed to get all the way to Bracknell from Patchway without purchasing a ticket. An RPI materialised and I had to explain my journey in detail. He said that I should've missed 1 of the 2 unofficial connections and purchased my ticket at either BRI or RDG.
I was now facing a full open fare and a penalty fare and was just a little miffed. I managed to keep calm and reasoned and kept repeating my story, pointing out I had made numerous attempts to find on train staff to buy a ticket. At no time was I attempting to fare dodge. If I was I would've gone 1 stop further at got off at ungated Martins Heron! The RPI finally relented when I refused point blank to give my personal details. He threatened me with BTP and I said I'd be glad to explain to them the situation. His bluff was called and he sold me my off-peak return.
Now what I want to know is was I in the wrong? If you make a journey with unnofficial connections from an unmanned station do you need to add to your journey time by going to buy a ticket? Rather perversely I actually was held up at Bracknell for 30 minutes dealing with the obstinate RPI. So my time saving was wiped out!

I had a sort of similar - got on at egham going to Putney - had a world of trouble trying to get parked - I had arrived in time for the train before the one I HAD to get - ended up running and jumping on the absolute last train I could get and not miss the meeting.  Couldnt find the TM anywhere - got penaltied.  Got told I should have missed my train.  Got penaltied.  I didnt have 30 minutes to aregue the toss otherwise I would have just got the enxt train anyway!

The only point you actually did anything illegal was when you refused to give your details to the RPI!  ;)
I would encourage you to write a complaint reciting all the effort you have made to buy a ticket as the conductor on your first train should not have cashed up so early, conductors are paid booking off time for this and their machine should be in shift until they book off, at then end of the day the root cause to your problem was this conductor!

My view is that if a passenger arrives at a connecting station with time on top of the minimum connection (10 minutes at Bristol) then they should spend that time trying to buy a ticket if they don't already have one, and that if a train is on time and they want to make an earlier connection then I would usually treat them as I would someone who hasn't bought a ticket from a booking office (my bark is usually a lot worse than my bite!).

In response to vacman, guards do get paid a booking off allowance, however the five minutes allowed for me (may be different for FGW) from the arrival time of your last service is barely enough time to walk to the depot, let alone sort out your paperwork, money and credit card slips. It does seem you were let down by the other guards though. Just because a station is gated doesn't mean that people wont board without tickets, or with the right tickets. One of my colleagues recently got a two day suspension and a final warning for not going through his train.

It's easy enough to spot those who are 'at it' on train or at gateline, and lets be honest you'd have to be a fairly dim fare dodger to admit you'd travelled all that distance. Rule of thumb, where poissible is to speak to a guard, preferably as you board a train, if you've not got a ticket. They'll be far more likely to sell you what you want as they'll get commision on it, unlike RPI's at a gateline.

Sorry you had a crummy journey (and if it's any consolation, I've made it all the way from Oxford to Whitland several times with no ticket check whatsoever, but I didn't have the same problem as you because I was able to buy a ticket at the start of my journey). I think there is a small issue with what you did: on a totally literal interpretation of the rules and NRCoC, the Reading connection was not an official one and so you technically should have waited for the "correct" connecting train, which would have given you the chance to buy a ticket in Reading. HOWEVER, had the previous two conductors been more "on the ball" you would have had a ticket by then so it shouldn't have been an issue!

On my 2nd trip back to coach A after Chippenham, I seriously considered knocking on the door. But I didn't fancy looking a chump if there was no reply! I'm fairly certain the TM was not doing a ticket check when she finally appeared from coach A. She was past me in a flash toward the buffet, before I could attract her attention. This was a late morning quietish service so not attempting a single ticket check between BRI and RDG was a little unusual. Of course there could be a multitude of operational reasons why their was no ticket check. However on following her to the buffet and hearing her ask for a cuppa.....

And I do think I know the word you are refering to, flamingo. Starts with 'L' and ends with 'azy' :P (Dear Mods - flamingo was only thinking it......it were me what said it!) ;D ;D

I only got checked on one FGW train today, a rather "desperate" (shall we say - everybody else went rushing to the front 2 coaches upon seeing him  ;)) Exeter guard. He was clearly enjoying the prospect of issuing 7 singles to a group of adults. 

I encountered the same High Speed TM too, both times, making very thorough announcements, but no ticket checks. Not to worry, he shares my surname - so I will let him off  :D

Problem with Cotswold line is the lack of ticket offices and TVMs on the route.

Combine this with an HST and SDO and ticket checking is very difficult for the guards to do thoroughly.

It is only because of the barriers at London, Reading an Oxford that revenue is not lost completely!

That's rather fortunate for a certain train manager named 'Metro', then, eh?  ;)

I've been there, twice that I can recall.   (I have taken the liberty of replacing the word "managed" in the quote with "ended up", as "managed" out of context could imply a lack of full effort.)   And I have documented these issues previously.  In both cases there were multiple failures of systems where I should have been able to get properly ticketed, and I ended up sorting it out (with subsequent long delays) at Paddington.

I appreciate that there are a lot of people who intentionally try to avoid paying even the lowest valid fare, and that it's in the TOCs interest, and the law abiding traveller (and taxpayer)'s interest to minimise  the times they succeed. But people who - through no fault of their own - get to destination unticketed are at present treated as suspicisous, subjected to delays and emotional stress, when they have done nothing at all wrong and indeed have tried to correct the situation along the way.

Questions that spring to my mind / areas I would love to know about from our more knowledgable members:

a) What steps are taken to ensure that totally innocent customers are not subject to such ordeals at destination?

b) What is done to make up for the delay and emotional harrassment that occurs in these circumstances? I can accept half an hour late if a train has failed ... I find it harder to accept on time train, then delayed due to being treated like a suspected criminal by rail staff when you are totally innocent but have been let down by the system.

As a third (and more specific) question ...

c) Why should a customer changing trains, who has been unable to buy his ticket on his first train due to systemic failure, have to spend his time queueing / sorting it out when he had planned / hoped to visit the loo, or buy a rather fine muffin and fresh brewed coffee to take onto the next train with him ...

I am a great advocate of train use - indeed, I'm setting off in a few minutes now on my way to Gatwick and would be using the train is there was a suitable one running (but there isn't - not from Chippenham, not from Westbury, and certainly not from Melksham!) - but the treatment of BignoseMac at Bracknell, of my own experiences at Paddington, sometimes make me wonder whether the railway companies really value their customers as they should.



Edit note by Chris: As grahame was rather rushed in the above post, I've corrected one typo for him - 'unable' for 'enable' in question c.

Actually its a fare point - about the eating bit.  Again I am unusual but take this scenario............

Valid ticket from slough to reading - train get in five late even leaving maybe 10 minutes to get train.  This is enough time to get onward ticket - yes.  However its 193X and I want the 1941 Swansea train.........i've not eaten since lunch, I know the best there'll be on the train are crispis or a nuked plastic burger, I'm not getting home until 1030pm as it is...........missing the 194X means getting home at 1130pm

I have a choice:

1. Get ticket, no food - get train
2. Get food, no ticket - get train
3. Get both - miss train

I will opt for (2) and buy what ever I need on the train - sorry.  Above situation genuinely happened. 

All I see is the onus is on the passenger to be invonvenienced in the aim to get a bit of paper.

.....or assuming you know you are going home, how about:

4. Buy ticket in advance, maybe on morning journey.
5. Buy food at Slough. They've got every possible food outlet on the station except an M&S 'Simply Food'. And a massive Tesco right next door. Unless you really must have an M&S sandwich from Reading station.....

Not sure that's an entirely fair characterisation of the situation - most seem to manage to fit in checks perfectly well in between stations. If I haven't been able to buy a ticket at Moreton, it's pretty unusual to get all the way to the barriers at Oxford without being able to buy one from a conductor. Moreton and Evesham are both staffed 6am-ish to 7pm-ish weekdays and on Saturdays 6am-1pm, while Charlbury and Kingham are both staffed in the morning Mon-Sat. Charlbury also has a machine (not sure about Kingham), as does Hanborough. Although it would seem sensible to have one at Pershore, the station is a pretty quiet spot at night, down off the road and surrounded by business units, so I think a TVM might attract unwanted attention, like Nailsea's did.

It really doesn't strike me as a massive problem - read my experiences of the 8.58 from Malvern only the other day in Cotswold Line Redoubling thread, where, of about 250 people on board, just one was ticketless and was caught by a conductor doing his job.

Indeed the route's worst problem with fare-dodging, as I think I've mentioned here before - reflecting what flamingo says above - was the Friday evening expresses from London before the Paddington barrier line went in, where large numbers of people who were clearly well able to afford a fare would board without a ticket and hope that they had reached Charlbury or Kingham before the conductor had got through all the other people without tickets further back down the train.

I had a simular situation yesterday when I caught a train from Port Talbot Parkway to Cardiff Central. There was a long wait to buy a ticket at the station ticket office, no ticket machine in Port Talbot and also no ticket barriers at this station. So I made the decision to get on the London train since I would otherwise have missed it and have to wait around half an hour - no-one came around to check tickets on the HST. When I got to Cardiff I purchased a ticket at the back of the station for the journey so I had a ticket to go through the barriers.

Sometimes you just make a judgement what is best - do you wait and buy a ticket and run the risk of missing the train or just get on and buy a ticket on board or at your destination.

I also did say it was from Port Talbot rather than Bridgend I had travelled because im honest and also there are ticket barriers in Bridgend so they would know I had travelled from a station without barriers!

However

I have also used my slough to WOS season to get through the barriers at slough to hop on a london train however I showed my season at the excess window - explaied that I barely made it on - and paid for a slough to london with discount.

Does that mean barriers work - no.  because id still have looked to pay anyway!  The fact I had a 1K plus season probably helped.  Had I been a scrote wanted to avoid paying - I'd just have bought a slough to langley and hoped we came in on 1 or 9 which the 1732 nearly always does!

Yes, appreciated. On an insignificantly small sample of my own experiences (two!), this has happened to some degree. They knew the Hungerford machine was out, but not that the train manager's was out also ... so it resulted in quite a long queue at a single "naughty boy" counter, with a chap and then a chapess in front arguing for what seemed like an eternity on a totally different topics (they probably hadn't followed all the rules, but whether by accident or design I don't know).  It wasn't an eternity, of course ... train arrived on time, and just over half an hour later I got through the barriers. 


Indeed, it is ... and in an imperfect world, I mightily resent being put through hoops to stick to the rules because of failings of the system that should be in place.  That applies not only to point three.


Yes, you have a conundrum there.  Yet I have learned over the years that even the most implausible-sounding reasons can on occasions turn out to be right. I'll have to tell you sometime about the computer terminal that sometimes went into a loop of misbehaving and jerked back to life with a good thump on the side. And it turned out to be a software problem, fixed by altering code on the mainframe to which it was attached ....

Flamingo, Thanks for your answer.  I had really hoped to get back with you much quicker on this one, but I had the busiest of weekends!