What Are You Doing Now?

[Poppy]

I'm sure you'll love it, Chrissie! Here's a link for the website: http://rivershack.co.uk/index.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Chrissie777]

Thank you, Poppy. I added it to my bookmarks. It sure looks like a beautiful area!

[Moonraker]

I spent most of my time talking to the people there

Do you talk to complete strangers, Francis, or were you giving an official talk?

Poppy, it sounds as if you had a great adventure!

[Carlotta King]

SWT don't have conductors on the Wat-Exeter service, they have guards.

A one-day travelcard is the best option if travelling to London and using tube and bus. Any guard will be able to sell you one of these, although living in Exeter, you can buy this at the ticket office at Central.

So are the men and women on the trains who come round to check tickets not called conductors anymore? I always thought guards were the people on the station platform who supervised the arriving and departing of the trains with their coloured table-tennis bats, and that conductors were on the trains?

So this one-day travelcard, how does that work if you're going for a couple of/few days?

[floragord]

So this one-day travelcard, how does that work if you're going for a couple of/few days?

Its so worth getting a pre-pay Oyster Card if you are in London for more than one day, its a huge saving on what you'd pay per single fare, and if you don't use up all you've paid there's no use-by date, it'll do for next time round!

On Southern trains the guard/conductor always stands by when the doors open, so I get on there and arrange to buy a ticket - even if they have to come back to me they always do so, then there's no quibble about where one hopped on!

[Fiona1986]

I use my Oyster Card whenever I'm in London as it's so much easier than buying individual fares and tickets especially if you're not sure how many journeys you're going to take in a single day. Plus I can top it up online before I go and then travel as soon as I arrive.

[Moonraker]

So are the men and women on the trains who come round to check tickets not called conductors anymore? I always thought guards were the people on the station platform who supervised the arriving and departing of the trains with their coloured table-tennis bats, and that conductors were on the trains?

Much depends on the TOC that runs your service. FGW have conductors (a guard in all but name) on board, but SWT have commercial guards. They are called commercial as they have the ability to issue tickets for passengers boarding at unstaffed stations with no machines. Guards are in charge of the train - the name originated as they had to "guard" the train. The staff who wave the paddles are called, I believe, Train Dispatchers.

If you travel to London often, or stay more than one day, an Oyster card is essential. Travelcards are only available for one day, as Floragord says.

[John Pickup]

I've been to Gainsborough a few times before when Northwich Victoria played them in the Conference North. It's definitely a little bit out of the way How often do you go John?

.

Not very often, I'm afraid. I used to write a column for the matchday programme and received one copy of the programme free for my efforts. Then, one day, I was asked to pay for the programme I had contributed to so I said stuff it and stopped attending matches. If I go to any football matches nowadays, it is at Hillsborough to see Sheffield Wednesday.

[Francis]

Nigel wrote

Do you talk to complete strangers, Francis, or were you giving an official talk?

It was the poor ladies who stand each room to answer people's queries. I tried not to lecture them too much!

[Anita Bensoussane]

On Southern trains the guard/conductor always stands by when the doors open, so I get on there and arrange to buy a ticket - even if they have to come back to me they always do so, then there's no quibble about where one hopped on!

If everyone did that on every train, how would the guards/conductors remember them all and get round to them all?

Where I live, you're not allowed to pay on the train. There are notices all over the station saying that if you board the train without a valid ticket, you'll be charged a £20 penalty plus the full single fare (i.e. no discounts even if you've got a Railcard, and they won't sell you a return ticket so you'll have to buy another single if you want to come back).

[Carlotta King]

If everyone did that on every train, how would the guards/conductors remember them all and get round to them all?

The answer is, that they don't always get round to everyone.
There are a couple of stations here that are just tiny halts with no ticket machines or staff, and I've had free journeys on many occasions simply because the conductor/guard just doesn't get round to me for me to purchase a ticket. Sometimes you don't even see the conductor at all, he just hops out onto the platform to help people on, then gets back in with the driver at the front, and doesn't appear in the train at all, even though he knows that we need to buy tickets, because it was just a halt with no machine.

Other times when the trains are packed, they conductor just doesn't have time to get round by the time that some people need to disembark, especially if they're only travelling a couple of stops.
On the long journeys though, he/she always usually gets round to everyone because he/she has a lot more time.

Where I live, you're not allowed to pay on the train. There are notices all over the station saying that if you board the train without a valid ticket, you'll be charged a £20 penalty plus the full single fare (i.e. no discounts even if you've got a Railcard, and they won't sell you a return ticket so you'll have to buy another single if you want to come back).

Same here - they also have announcements on a tannoy at the stations saying that you'll be charged a penalty. To be honest I've never been charged a penalty for not having a ticket, I've just been allowed to buy a normal one but been given a bit of a huffy attitude from the conductor while they're selling me the ticket.

I'm not sure if the conductors are told when certain ticket machines at certain stations aren't working, so that they'll understand that people won't have been able to buy tickets.

It's a difficult one really - obviously there are a lot of people who take the mickey and would try to get a free journey by not buying a ticket at the station, so it's probably quite fair to charge them a penalty, but on the other hand some people genuinely haven't been able to buy one, either due to machines not working, or being held up, or something. I've lost count of the times that the machines, although seemingly working fine, refused to take some of my coins (you know how it is, the supermarket self-scans do it as well) - nothing wrong with the coins but the machine just keeps chucking them back, so I've been unable to buy a ticket. Obviously my reason was genuine and thankfully I've never been charged a penalty, but how do the staff differentiate between genuine people who've had trouble, and fare-dodgers? I would be very cross if I was charged a penalty when I had tried my utmost to buy a ticket but the machine was playing up.
Obviously my main priority would be to catch my train, so if the train was about to leave, I wouldn't bother trying to go and buy a ticket from the office or something, I'd just hop on the train - not because I was trying to dodge paying, but because the train was about to leave!

[Anita Bensoussane]

They make passengers pay the penalty here - I've heard them charging people! We're not reliant on ticket machines as we have a service counter as well, though it gets busy at times.

[Carlotta King]

Crikey they must be a bit stricter in your area!

I did get charged an upgrade fee once because I had a standard class ticket and I had to sit in First Class because there were literally no other seats anywhere. Every standard class carriage was full and people were sitting on the floor and everything, and sitting out in the corridors etc, a previous train had been cancelled so the train I was on had all the passengers from the other train as well, there were just too many people.
I was a bit cross about it because I did try to find somewhere to sit and would have been perfectly happy to sit in standard class if there had been a seat, I only went into First Class because I had to. I think under the circumstances (obviously they knew they had an overcrowding problem because of the cancelled train) they should have waived upgrade fees.

[Carlotta King]

We're not reliant on ticket machines as we have a service counter as well, though it gets busy at times.

Yes, we have a counter at our main large station, but the other smaller ones either have just a machine or nothing at all.
Our counter always has huge queues as well!

[Anita Bensoussane]

I agree about waiving the upgrade fees, Cathy. If standard class is full, passengers should be allowed to sit in any available seats anywhere on the train without paying extra. There are never enough seats in standard class and some people are forced to stand for much of the journey, which is terrible considering the cost of a ticket. Luggage storage is inadequate as well - there's not enough space for suitcases or big bags so they block the aisles. Of course these problems would be solved if they just put on a few more coaches, but they never do!