Great Western Coffee Shop

Isn't the asterix marked on the ticket next to the station where the ticket was purchased?

No: I have tickets with an asterisk next to Bath Spa and Melksham - both of which were purchased at Nailsea & Backwell!  ;)

I think the asterisk is just to prevent the addition of other (fraudulent) characters on the ticket?  ;D

No, it's a security thing to stop you changing a station name (eg Aber to Aberdeen).

Anyway, thanks to Videolan I've managed to get a better picture than bignosemac:
(http://ndrailusers.wikispaces.com/file/view/Screenshot.png/112464199/Screenshot.png)

The station is part of the long string of numbers on the right - 2034 is the machine number, 3410 is the station you bought it at (in this case Exeter St Davids) and the final 34 refers to the individual ticket window/retail point.

There seems to have been a software modification recently to STAR. The 10-digit number on the right would formerly have been displayed 2034o3410W34 instead of all bunched up together.

As TJ says, 2034 is the machine number. The "o" symbol was to denote a magnetically encoded ticket that will operate ticket barriers - it was designed to look like the London Underground logo and originated way back in BR days when LU had more or less the only automatic ticket barriers that passengers were likely to encounter. Surprisingly recently (less than ten years ago) not all tickets were encoded - I have some advance purchase tickets issued from the Wales and West telesales office in 2000 kicking around somewhere. These were issued using APTIS on the old-style navy blue border "Advance Purchase" ticket stock and are missing the little plimsoll mark.

The four-digit National Location Code (NLC) of the issuing station is next - the ticket office and TVMs at any given location seem to have different codes, e.g. 3115 for Oxford ticket office but 6254 for Oxford TVMs. The NLC is followed by a letter indicating the former BR region that controlled the issuing station (E for Eastern, H for Scottish, M for London Midland, S for Southern, W for Western). Last came the window number (with apologies to TJ for the repetition!)

Some systems (e.g. Avantix) have never printed the regional indicator - it doesn't appear on tickets mailed out by thetrainline either; in both these cases it's just replaced by a dash.

There are still machines that issue tickets with the "old style" numbering (including the plimsoll and regional indicator) - one of the fast ticket machines near the old Thames Valley ticket office at Paddington where I collected tickets a couple of weeks ago for example. Although bizarrely on that one the region code was printed as "S".

I will now put my anorak away for the moment...

It's surprising how many options there would be to do that, too!

In Aber you have Abercynon, Aberdare, Aberdeen, Aberdour, Aberdovey, Abererch, Abergavenny, Abergele & Pensarn, Aberystwyth
In Ascot you have Ascott-under-Wychwood
In Ash you have Ash Vale, Ashburys, Ashchurch for Tewkesbury, Ashfield, Ashford (Surrey), Ashford International, Ashford International (Eurostar), Ashley, Ashtead, Ashton-under-Lyne, Ashurst, Ashurst New Forest, Ashwell & Morden
In Ashford International you have Ashford International (Eurostar)
In Ashurst you have Ashurst New Forest
In Barnes you have Barnes Bridge
In Barry you have Barry Docks, Barry Island, Barry Links
In Battle you have Battlesbridge
In Bedford you have Bedford St Johns
In Bentley you have Bentley (South Yorks)
In Berwick you have Berwick-upon-Tweed
In Bexley you have Bexleyheath
In Bloxwich you have Bloxwich North
In Bolton you have Bolton-on-Dearne
In Bootle you have Bootle New Strand, Bootle Oriel Road
In Braintree you have Braintree Freeport
In Bramley you have Bramley (Hants)
In Bromborough you have Bromborough Rake
In Brondesbury you have Brondesbury Park
In Brough you have Broughty Ferry
In Brundall you have Brundall Gardens
In Burnham you have Burnham-on-Crouch
In Cambridge you have Cambridge Heath
In Carshalton you have Carshalton Beeches
In Castleton you have Castleton Moor
In Catford you have Catford Bridge
In Charing you have Charing Cross (Glasgow)
In Chester you have Chester Road, Chester-le-Street, Chesterfield
In Chorley you have Chorleywood
In Clifton you have Clifton Down
In Colchester you have Colchester Town
In Cowden you have Cowdenbeath
In Cressing you have Cressington
In Dalston you have Dalston Kingsland
In Dawlish you have Dawlish Warren
In Dean you have Dean Lane, Deansgate
In Denham you have Denham Golf Club
In Dent you have Denton
In Derby you have Derby Road
In Dorking you have Dorking Deepdene, Dorking West
In Eccles you have Eccles Road, Eccleston Park
In Edenbridge you have Edenbridge Town
In Epsom you have Epsom Downs
In Hale you have Halesworth, Halewood
In Hampton you have Hampton Court, Hampton Wick, Hampton-in-Arden
In Harringay you have Harringay Green Lanes
In Hatfield you have Hatfield & Stainforth, Hatfield Peverel
In Hawarden you have Hawarden Bridge
In Higham you have Highams Park
In Hove you have Hoveton & Wroxham
In Ince you have Ince & Elton
In Johnston you have Johnstone
In Kentish Town you have Kentish Town West
In Kirkby you have Kirkby Stephen, Kirkby in Ashfield, Kirkby-in-Furness
In Lake you have Lakenheath
In Langley you have Langley Green, Langley Mill
In Lee you have Leeds
In Lelant you have Lelant Saltings
In Llandudno you have Llandudno Junction
In London Waterloo you have London Waterloo East
In Lostock you have Lostock Gralam, Lostock Hall
In Loughborough you have Loughborough Junction
In Luton you have Luton Airport Parkway
In Maesteg you have Maesteg (Ewenny Road)
In Mansfield you have Mansfield Woodhouse
In Matlock you have Matlock Bath
In Melton you have Melton Mowbray
In Meols you have Meols Cop
In Mossley you have Mossley Hill
In New Cross you have New Cross Gate
In Newbury you have Newbury Racecourse
In Orrell you have Orrell Park
In Par you have Parbold, Park Street, Parkstone (Dorset), Parson Street, Partick, Parton
In Pembroke you have Pembroke Dock
In Porth you have Porthmadog
In Preston you have Preston Park, Prestonpans
In Purley you have Purley Oaks
In Reading you have Reading West
In Roche you have Rochester
In Runcorn you have Runcorn East
In Rye you have Rye House
In St Albans you have St Albans Abbey
In Stamford you have Stamford Hill
In Stone you have Stone Crossing, Stonebridge Park, Stonegate, Stonehaven, Stonehouse, Stoneleigh
In Streatham you have Streatham Common, Streatham Hill
In Sudbury you have Sudbury & Harrow Road, Sudbury Hill Harrow
In Sway you have Swaythling
In Sydenham you have Sydenham Hill
In Trefforest you have Trefforest Estate
In Ware you have Wareham
In Warwick you have Warwick Parkway
In Welling you have Wellingborough, Wellington (Shropshire)
In Wem you have Wembley Central, Wembley Stadium, Wemyss Bay
In West Ham you have West Hampstead, West Hampstead Thameslink
In West Hampstead you have West Hampstead Thameslink
In Whyteleafe you have Whyteleafe South
In Wick you have Wickford, Wickham Market
In Wimbledon you have Wimbledon Chase
In Winnersh you have Winnersh Triangle
In Woking you have Wokingham
In Wool you have Woolston, Woolwich Arsenal, Woolwich Dockyard

Wow! Grahame, who can argue with that excellent list. Is the snow that deep that you can't get out? (I jest!)

I particularly liked the idea of amending a ticket from Barry Docks to Barry into a ticket from Barry Docks to Barry Links ... although of course the only reason I can post this (<i>also in jest</i>) is that we're not publicising an open loophole, but one that has been firmly closed for years.   My list came for a Perl program that took 5 minutes to modify from the one that I wrote over Christmas and let TJ find a humbug in Mussleburgh!

You inspired me to look these up ... and it turns out there are even more code.  I've started a separate thread at
http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=6078.0

One thing that has always confused me on rail tickets is the fact that there is an 'ADULT' and 'CHILD' section, but these can only (or seem to be only) ONE or NIL. Wouldn't it make more sense to have it say - printed - 'CHILD' or ADULT' instead? They could also put some of the railcard things there too.

Like I say, that's always confused me, right from when I was a littleun and was going round on the rails with my mum - why we had tickets each when they could have 'ONE' under both columns and save paper...

Did they - or do they - ever have the ability to put more than one person on one ticket?

(Incidentally, the ticket shown above is probably more pointless than my EXD to EXC return ticket that I bought a while ago for platform access at EXD to take photos, then decided that as I bought the ticket I might as well use it so hopped on a Pacer to EXC (where my ticket was checked even before the train left the station!) and was on a SWT back down the hill afterwards... pointless, but amusing :))

I believe that APTIS had the ability is issue tickets for more than one person.  The number would be in words up to ten, then it would be numerical after ten 12**, 14** etc.  I'm not sure if modern systems have this ability as I'm always given millions of bits of paper everytime I buy a ticket for a group.

My wife and I brought a ticket on board a Scotrail train from Newtonmore to Hyndland.  After checking we were travelling together, the Guard handed me a single piece of card with "two" under "adult".

I don't know if this was the Guard's usual habbit or if he was runnign short of ticket stock.

I also seem to recall a six-form trip I took with 40 other kids from my school.  IIRC, we were all travelling on 4 or 5 tickets held by the teachers.

It can be a useful option but presumably one of the reasons it isn't used very much is that it is not very compatible with automatic ticket gates (although one would like to think that gates will not retain such tickets so at least the second passenegr can pass through the manual gate?). 

There are differences dependant on where you buy your tickets from, ie. Ticket office or ticket machine.

Tickets from the ticket machine display both the Adult and Child sections, however from more modern ticket issuing facilities eg at EXD, it will display Adult One .

You're right d_m. Spot the difference: (ignore the Y-P, conductor pressed wrong button on Avantix!)

(http://i598.photobucket.com/albums/tt68/bignosemac/lastscan.jpg)

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/threeonone.jpg)

Our ticket from today.   Guard just smiled when I asked if he was short on ticket stock / reminded me that we had to all travel together (we would have to anyway - only one practical return train  :-[ ) and because we had a dog with us we went through the manual gate at Oxford so I can't answer onteh barrier question.    But I've added the picture / post to show that multiple passenger tickets ARE around and issues, currently, in these parts too.

On Group Save tickets at least, this appears to be common practice:

(http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/4453/picture153i.jpg) (http://img684.imageshack.us/i/picture153i.jpg/)

;)

It may be default on Avantix Mobile to do this to save ticket stock, but Star (as used by FGW ticket offices) certainly churns out one ticket per person, even on a GPS-4 ticket.  They even gave us one reservation coupon per seat, per leg of travel (so 8 reservations + 8 tickets).

Something I've noticed recently, which is gradually appearing on all ticket issues, is the lack of the theta symbol, region identifier and the new reverse shading on the start date on tickets bought in advance.