We will have to agree to disagree then!
Rather than leaving an important question unanswered, it would be helpful to provide the authorities for each point of view. I've already provided the judgement in
Hinchcliffe which has lot of similarities to the question raised here by
gnik1.
But I've now taken the oportunity to read through "
The Law of the Railway" by Leslie James BA, LLB, FCIT (1980), and find that he does seem to cover almost exactly the question we're facing here. I've copied the entire section below and hope that the publishers, Barry Rose Ltd, will forgive me:
i) A) The Passenger's Obligation to Pay the Proper Fare
The obligation to pay the proper fare, as we have already indicated, is normally met at the booking office when the ticket is delivered to the intending passenger.
At some railway stations, booking office facilities have been withdrawn or are only available at certain hours of the day. Arrangements have been made on certain routes for fares to be collected on the train during the journey. Not infrequently members of the public join trains without having previously obtained a ticket, either because they do not have time to obtain a ticket, or because they do not have the means to obtain one. They have no intent to avoid payment of the fare. They intend to purchase a ticket on the train, or to give their names and addresses and an undertaking to pay the fare at the first opportunity.
In any of these instances, the person travelling on the train is travelling under a standard contract of carriage, acceptance of which has been inferred from his conduct. He undertakes by implication to pay the fare as soon as may be. No precise time for this payment is presumed. All that can be inferred is that the implied undertaking will be discharged within a reasonable period of time.
Whether the terms of the contract are accepted explicitly or inferentially, the fare to be paid will be the fare for the whole journey, and by the train and in the carriage in which the person travels. So, if he pays for only part of the distance which he travels, or travels with a ticket which is not available on that day, or by that train, or, if he travels first class on a second class ticket, he will not have paid his fare: Gillingham v Walker (1881) 45 J.P. 470.
If a person obtains a cheap day excursion ticket from A to C and the ticket on the face of it, is not available intermediately from A to B, then the fare from A to B will not have been paid: R v Frere (1855) 4 E. & B. 598. See also the note on Byelaw 5 at p249.
Similarly, if the excursion fare from A to C together with the ordinary fare from C to D is less than the normal fare from A to D, a person who, intending to travel from A to D, purchases the excursion ticket and then seeks to pay the normal fare from C to D, will not have paid his fare from A to D within the meaning of the section: London & North Western Rly. Co. v Hinchcliffe [1963] 2 K.B. 32.
Then, again, the fare must be paid to the appropriate undertaking or their accredited agents. If a man buys a non-transferable ticket from another person, he will not have paid his fare so as to fulfil the terms of the contract: Reynolds v Beasley [1919] 1 K.B. 215.
If a fare is paid to a ticket inspector on the train, an inferred acceptance by conduct will then become an explicit one. So, also, if a person is permitted by a ticket inspector to join a train without a ticket or is issued with a voucher against a promise to pay the fare in due course, he will then be travelling by explicit agreement of the undertaking concerned.
Does this help?
- - - - -ADDITIONAL INFORMATION - - - -
We could also look at
Covington v Wright (1963) All ER 212m which concerned a London bus passenger who had only paid for part of their journey. This judgement by Lord Chief Justice Parker, Ashworth J and Winn J is often cited in Railway disputes to clarify that the fare due should 'only' be the amount of the full journey "from the place from whence she started", and that where part of the fare has already been paid, then "pay his fare” must mean “make up the full payment of his fare” - this logic is used to reduce the amount due to just the through fare less whatever has already been paid. The same logic, in the case of 'split tickets', which would be cheaper than the through fare, give us the opposite result : the fare due is still the full though fare less whatever has already been paid, losing any 'saving' in attempting to 'split' tickets. This is the position which
gnik1 found him/herself. As Leslie James put it above, the person in this situation is travelling on 'a standard contract'. Not under any 'special deal' or complex arrangement of tickets.
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If I could add further authority to the question of travel on a ticket which does not cover the entire journey, we could recall that the most widely used incident of Criminal intent in travelling without having paid the fare due AND having passed an opportunity to pay is
Corbyn v Saunders (1978) 1 WLR 400.
Whilst it is widely known that Corbyn passed a ticket office without paying, an action which has given us the concept of an opportunity to pay, it is less well known that Corbyn always had a ticket for the first leg of his journey PLUS a written note that he would pay whatever additional amount was due later, in respect of the second leg of his journies.
This is an illustration of a ticket for part of the journey plus a promise to pay for the remainder being used as the paradigm of fare evasion!
To PermitToTravel, island, najaB and others interested in how the Railway Clauses Consolidation Act S.103 might engage, there is a raft of decisions from the higher Courts which have captured the behavior described in this thread. For another instance,
Great Western Railway v Pocock in which P travelled beyond the validity of his ticket "when he arrived at [destination on his ticket] the contract was at an end, and the Company had fulfilled their part of the contract, and P was not entitled to travel [further]".
