So if I am at Paignton after the ticket office opening hours and wants a Devon Rvening Rsnger I must buy a ticket of some description to be "valid" and I can then swap the ticket and pay the appropriate difference??
Absolutely right - the situation is dealt with explicitly by condition 3: see Chris's post above.
If I board a train at an unstaffed station, e.g. a Severn Beach Line station and then have a connection to take at a Penalty Fares station (Bristol Temple Meads). With only 10 minutes connection time before my next train (the minimum allowed).
It takes about 5 minutes to safely walk through the subway to another platform. So if I were to buy a ticket at the sin bin, I would miss my connection. So, I decide to board my next train which is a penalty fares train from a penalty fares station.
Would I have a leg to stand on? How exactly would they believe that I did in fact start my journey at an unmanned station?
The way I understand the NRCoC▸ is that provided you started your journey at an unmanned and un-TVMed station (a term I've just made up), you won't be charged a penalty fare. Is this correct?
Yes, correct! What's crucial is where you started your journey - as the SVB line stations are
not penalty fare stations you're in the clear.
You will not be entitled to any discounts or special
terms unless either:
(i) at the station where you started your journey:
there was no ticket office or no ticket office was open AND there were no self-service ticket machines or no self-service ticket machines were in full working order AND in Penalty Fares areas you bought a Permit to Travel unless no Permit to Travel issuing machine was in full working order.
(my emphasis in bold)
Note that this also covers
TVMs▸ : unless the TVM is in FULL working order (i.e. accepting cash AND cards where it is designed to do so) you are also in the clear.
To take the precise example you describe of changing from the Severn Beach line into a connection at Temple Meads: you can't be charged a penalty fare because your journey started at a non-penalty fares station. Were
FGW▸ to attempt to issue a penalty fare
they have to prove that you joined at a penalty fares station. The onus is
not on you to prove that you didn't. A similar situation would exist if you were travelling from, say Radley or Appleford (unstaffed, no TVMs, majority of services
DOO▸ without any ticket examiners) and making a connection at Didcot.
The NRCoC say that in this situation you should purchase a ticket at the "earliest reasonable opportunity". In this situation, a strong case could be made that a 10-minute connection at
BRI» is
not a reasonable opportunity. The bottom line is that the NRCoC actually protect you quite well as long as you have started your journey at a station where no ticket-buying facilities exist. Unfortunately not all staff seem to be fully aware of this.
I am reminded of an incident a few years ago when I was travelling from Oxford to Bristol by way of REading due to engineering work. This was at stupid-o-clock in the morning, so the ticket office was shut. At the time there was only one ticket machine that would have sold me a ticket to Bristol and this was b*gg*red, so I fed some coins into the
PERTIS▸ machine and got a permit to travel instead. Train to Reading was DOO, no staff on board, and ran slightly late so I had a fairly tight connection to make the Bristol service. Even though I had a permit to travel and had boarded at a station without ticket office or fully working TVMs the guard initially tried to bully me into paying the standard open fare. I stood my ground and he relented to a Saver, but still refused to apply a Y-P discount (this is back in the days when I was young enough for one of them). Left with little choice I coughed up for the saver. A call to FGW customer relations at the end of the journey elicited the spectacularly tactless (and more to the point wrong) response that I should not have boarded that train at Reading without a ticket even though I could not purchase one at my origin station. When I asked if that meant I should have missed my connection she said, simply "yes". At this point I dropped an email to the marvellous Barry Doe who fired off a quick message to someone senior (Elaine Holt, if memory serves) pointing out that FGW were flagrantly breaching the NRCoC, which elicited an extremely rapid, although somewhat sanctimonious letter of apology and a refund to the correct fare.
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