Ticket Barrier accepting invalid ticket

Surrey 455

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Ticket Barrier accepting invalid ticket

« on: October 13, 2018, 20:14:15 »

I had a strange experience at Crawley Station today. I meant to put the return portion of my ticket to Bookham in the ticket barrier but without thinking I put my usual season ticket (which is for Bookham to London zones 1-6) in instead. The ticket went through and to my surprise when I picked it up, the barrier opened. Why? That ticket is not valid for that journey?


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Chris from Nailsea

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Justice for Cerys Piper and Theo Griffiths please!

Re: Ticket Barrier accepting invalid ticket

« Reply #1 on: November 12, 2024, 20:39:06 »

Perhaps just another of the vagaries of the ticketing system, Surrey 455 Roll Eyes


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William Huskisson MP^▸ was the first person to be killed by a train while crossing the tracks, in 1830. Many more have died in the same way since then. Don't take a chance: stop, look, listen.

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Ralph Ayres

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Re: Ticket Barrier accepting invalid ticket

« Reply #2 on: November 12, 2024, 23:30:17 »

I can't say specifically, but having done it myself long ago, creating the ticket checking data was often a highly-manual process involving maps, highlighter pens, a darkened room and a bucket of cold water to plunge your head in when it all got too much. The starting point for setting up gates at a station for the first time was often taking the data from a vaguely-similar station (maybe one nearby, maybe just a similar distance from London) and modifying it. Quite easy to leave a stray bit of spurious data in, and quite hard to spot; funnily enough, people tended to complain more about tickets not working that should do than the other way round!


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