A few further notes:
- I noted that there was a "ticket selling carriage" on trains in Finland. If, for any of the many valid reasons, you had no ticket, you could sit there and purchase one from the conductor, who would spend 90% of his time in that carriage and only go to the others to check for those needing help/advice or antisocial behaviour, etc. Meanwhile, the equivalent of RPIs inspected the other carriages at random, and issued fines (100 euros as I recall) to those not holding a ticket in any other carriage. While such a system would not directly translate to a British context, sitting in that carriage illustrated the principle of showing willingness to pay for a ticket, and thus not being treated as a criminal, and that's a good principle.
One then changes onto another train (train B ) at a station with an open booking office.
Where does one stand on train B when asked for a ticket ?
I would have thought that one is not evading payment, since there were no ticket facilities where one started the journey.
This is answered by the byelaw wording:
(3) No person shall be in breach of Byelaw 18(1) or 18(2) if:
(i) there were no facilities in working order for the issue or validation of any ticket at the time when, and the station where, he began his journey...
Therefore, if there were no facilities at the station where you began your journey, at no point are you in breach of that byelaw. And staff respect this - Whenever I go from Burley Park to Manchester or Sheffield, except on the odd occasion that a guard is working efficiently or RPIs are on board, I purchase that ticket without there ever being any argument on board the connecting train on from Leeds. Few passengers know this, and many panic on arriving at Leeds with no ticket for their onward connection.
How many people board a train and seek out the guard to pay? Not many I can tell you, most people I see sit hiding hoping he doesn't come down.
Me. I do. I do this quite a lot when for legitimate reasons I wasn't able to buy a ticket.
I used to often through-book from Appleby to Glasgow/Edinburgh, but with the introduction of CDRs, splitting at Carlisle became advantageous. The first few times I often forgot I wasn't through-booked until around or just before the time of boarding, and I would go straight to the conductor and ask for a Y-P CDR; they would always oblige without argument.
I traveled from London to Oxford free the other day, but not deliberately. Because of missing a Circle Line train and losing nine minutes waiting for the next, I had the choice between trying to buy a ticket in three minutes risking missing the last fast train to oxford or getting on without a ticket, and I obviously chose the latter. I looked for the conductor, not realising 165s don't necessarily have them! And I rode the rest of the way knowing technically I was breaking a railway byelaw, and feeling VERY uncomfortable about it.
So no, not all of us without tickets are willing criminals, and some of us do make every attempt to pay as soon as possible.