Has the Maltese Cross been retired?

[RochdalePioneers]

Bought advance tickets Darlington - Laindon from VTEC where the route is EC +connections and the itinerary is London Underground between Kings Cross and Fenchurch Street.

When I collected the tickets from the machine I was surprised to see no Maltese Cross printed for the cross London bit.

I've emailed VTEC Web support and they have confirmed that the tickets have printed correctly. As I have experienced in the past not all tickets properly open ticket barriers and LU gateline staff relied on the Maltese Cross to check validity.

So two questions if I may:
1. Has the Maltese Cross been dropped with the recent redesign? Do LU have staff trained on valid NR routes...?
2. If not how do I persuade VTEC that the tickets are incorrect?

Photo attached for your perusal

 

[najaB]

The format includes the Maltese cross: Exhibit A

 

[RochdalePioneers]

My tickets have a vertical line. Not a cross...

 

[Bletchleyite]

Problem is the missing Route field on Advances. So I would expect problems based on my past experience

Unless that vertical bar is meant to be it.

 

[najaB]

My tickets have a vertical line. Not a cross...

Aye, what I was trying to say is that new format tickets can have the Maltese cross, the issue is either with how VTEC's machines print or, as Neil Williams suggests, with the way Advance tickets are implemented.

 

[Mojo]

The tickets have printed incorrectly. Given other new style tickets have got the Maltese cross printed on them, and that that ticket also has other errors, I would suspect that the vertical bar is supposed to be the cross-London transfer marker.

 

[RochdalePioneers]

National Rail seems clear that tickets should have a cross on them. http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/ticket_types/46587.aspx

 

[AndrewE]

The format includes the Maltese cross: Exhibit A

There is no Maltese cross there and never has been. I can see [what we used to call] a dagger. As opposed to a double dagger, that had a cross-bar top and bottom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagger_(typography).
Perhaps a Maltese cross is a different shape nowadays? It seems not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltese_cross

Mods: please could someone amend the title to be Maltese cross (struck through) to Dagger?
A

 

[bb21]

I agree that the verticle bar is supposed to be the cross, with a short horizontal bar as seen in some examples, just badly printed.

 

[cf111]

My tickets have a vertical line. Not a cross...

I think that vertical bar is supposed to be it. I'm by no means an expert on ticketing but I think the computer lays out various "boxes" on the ticket and the box containing the top of the cross has been hidden behind the box containing the railcard information. Obviously when they're printed, you can't see one box underneath another. You can see a similar effect with "East Coast" hiding "with Family".

 

[RochdalePioneers]

Do does anyone know how LU gateline staff respond to ticket with random vertical line on them...?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Do does anyone know how LU gateline staff respond to ticket with random vertical line on them...?

My experience of LUL barrier staff is that if there is not an obvious Maltese Cross or dagger they will not accept it. Even when the booking office staff at Euston phone the station supervisor and tell them they are meant to, they refuse. This, FWIW, is supposedly something happening on a daily basis with First Class Caledonian Sleeper tickets which are (or at least were[1] in ScotRail days) valid for a single journey on the Tube but do not contain any specific marking showing this.

If the ticket works the gate, the OP will be fine, manual inspections on the Tube almost never happen in central London. If not, there is in my view almost no chance it will be accepted.

[1] The CS website seems to suggest this is no longer the case...if so, that's one way of solving it

 

[RochdalePioneers]

Thanks Neil, that's my experience as well. I'm emailing VTEC again. They fobbed me off with "New style tickets", "you have the correct tickets". Yes I do, but not correctly printed.

Will advise how I get on. BTW it's my wife and our two small kids who are using the tickets. Any aggro, I have questions to answer...!

 

[Mojo]

Thanks Neil, that's my experience as well. I'm emailing VTEC again. They fobbed me off with "New style tickets", "you have the correct tickets". Yes I do, but not correctly printed.

Will advise how I get on. BTW it's my wife and our two small kids who are using the tickets. Any aggro, I have questions to answer...!

I would imagine that they will work the barriers fine, but in the event that the tickets somehow lose their encoding, or they have been miscoded when issued, you will be relying on staff undertaking a manual inspection.

 

[RochdalePioneers]

I do love these new format tickets. So much space on there when you use teeny tiny fonts. Yet they still manage to overprint key information - and I appreciate my example isn't the worst...

Almost makes me miss the big airline type tickets that were popular for a while

 

[sheff1]

If they do not work the LU barrier, I suggest your wife buys tickets for the underground (or uses Oyster if she has one) and then makes a strong complaint to VTEC afterwards. Make sure she keeps the VTEC issued tickets at the end of journey to accompany the complaint

 

[ashworth]

I do love these new format tickets. So much space on there when you use teeny tiny fonts. Yet they still manage to overprint key information - and I appreciate my example isn't the worst...

Almost makes me miss the big airline type tickets that were popular for a while

I used to like those old airline style tickets when doing a complicated cross country journey with lots of connections. When using an Advance Purchase ticket often only a small part of the journey is on a booked train with a seat reservation. It was useful to have the whole itinerary with all the suggested connecting services printed on your ticket so that you knew that you would be on time to get the booked train section of the journey. Now if you don't print off your itinerary when you book online, or have it all written down you could easily mistime your connections if you have a number of changes to make before reaching the booked section of your journey.

Did these airline style tickets list the cross London section of the journey on the ticket rather than having the Maltese Cross? I don't think I ever used one for a journey via London.

 

[Bletchleyite]

FWIW I do quite like the new layout. But it seems to have been implemented incompetently in a number of places. The overprinting issue is particularly shoddy - raises the question if they even bothered to do a decent test process.

 

[AndrewE]

There is no Maltese cross there and never has been. I can see [what we used to call] a dagger. As opposed to a double dagger, that had a cross-bar top and bottom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagger_(typography).
Perhaps a Maltese cross is a different shape nowadays? It seems not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltese_cross

Mods: please could someone amend the title to be Maltese cross (struck through) to Dagger?
A

I've looked up the 1980s Working Time Tables (WTTs) I used to use...
A dagger mean Empty Coaching Stock and a double dagger means Advertised in Public Timetable, which is why I knew the names for the symbols.

 

[maniacmartin]

As printed on the tickets it may be a dagger typographically, but I believe the documentation from the rail industry still uses the term Maltese Cross when referring to cross-London transfers

 

[swt_passenger]

As printed on the tickets it may be a dagger typographically, but I believe the documentation from the rail industry still uses the term Maltese Cross when referring to cross-London transfers

The current NRES website page describing cross London travel doesn't include the words Maltese Cross, it just shows a single dagger symbol.

I've attached a screen grab of the relevant paragraph in the last publicly available NFM 99 section A below.

IMHO the 'Maltese Cross' symbol shown there is referring to the prices shown in the printed fares manual section C only. It goes on to explain that the actual tickets would show the single dagger. (Although I regularly see tickets that use a straightforward 'plus sign' instead).

Problem is I think that people use the term "Maltese Cross' colloquially, but that NFM suggests that a cross London 'dagger' was the correct term...

 

[Sprinter153]

I have seen some of the new style tickets (possibly from Parkeon machines) that do actually show a thick, angled Maltese Cross as opposed to a 'dagger'.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I must admit that generally, while the UI is terrible, the Parkeon machines seem to print the new format much more clearly than others.

 

[bb21]

I must admit that generally, while the UI is terrible, the Parkeon machines seem to print the new format much more clearly than others.

Yes, agreed. Being the trial machines, they seem to have done their testing pretty thoroughly.

Then it was rolled out to other types of machines, with a very poor testing effort seemingly, hence all the overprinting and other issues starting to pop up.

 

[RochdalePioneers]

Thanks for the NFM screen grab. I've had this response back from VTEC'S team leader:

"National Rail are commenting on the layout of their website. They are not commenting on the ticket itself.



Tickets do not, and will not, contain crosses. The crosses in question appear on the national rail website when searching for tickets to purchase, you may have misunderstood the information on their website."

The NR website passage in question he refers to not talking about tickets:

"To check if the cost of travel across London is included in your ticket, look for the ‘†' symbol which will be shown in the tickets ‘Route' information, e.g. [‘†' ANY PERMITTED].
Tickets displaying this indicator are valid for travel between any two stations shown in the ‘Station List' (below) appropriate to the route of the through journey being made."

Which is backed up by the NFM pic. So, Virgin talking utter nonsense. I can risk the £4.60 of tube fares if the tickets don't work, it's not about that. How do you get a rail company to accept that the National Fares Manual and National Rail are correct and they are wrong?

 

[Bletchleyite]

"To check if the cost of travel across London is included in your ticket, look for the ‘†' symbol which will be shown in the tickets ‘Route' information, e.g. [‘†' ANY PERMITTED].

The problem there, of course, is that Advance tickets don't have a Route field. It was removed as superfluous. But not superfluous in this case.

Clueless.

If you do get charged for the Tube, make sure you write in. If they are anything like VTWC they will send you £45 RTVs without even reading it

 

[bb21]

Thanks for the NFM screen grab. I've had this response back from VTEC'S team leader:

"National Rail are commenting on the layout of their website. They are not commenting on the ticket itself.



Tickets do not, and will not, contain crosses. The crosses in question appear on the national rail website when searching for tickets to purchase, you may have misunderstood the information on their website."

The NR website passage in question he refers to not talking about tickets:

"To check if the cost of travel across London is included in your ticket, look for the ‘†' symbol which will be shown in the tickets ‘Route' information, e.g. [‘†' ANY PERMITTED].
Tickets displaying this indicator are valid for travel between any two stations shown in the ‘Station List' (below) appropriate to the route of the through journey being made."

Which is backed up by the NFM pic. So, Virgin talking utter nonsense. I can risk the £4.60 of tube fares if the tickets don't work, it's not about that. How do you get a rail company to accept that the National Fares Manual and National Rail are correct and they are wrong?

With incompetence at this level, I think the next level should be taking it straight to the DfT, cc-ing Transport Focus (but I doubt they would know what a cross-London transfer is). If DfT had any balls they would come down like a ton of bricks. (Well, I can dream.)

Utter nonsense!!!!!