UK style tickets Vs European tickets

There seemed to be a move a few years ago to use European Style tickets (long ones, like Eurostar tickets) for UK rail journeys, certainly whenever you bought online for Intercity length journeys. Recently however there seems to have been a move back to UK style credit card size tickets for all journeys. Any reason for this? There are pros and cons to each - UK size is handier (though easier to lose) but you cant fit ticket and reservation on same ticket.

The UK standard stock fits in auto-barrier slots, that is the main reason why ELGAR (which uses the larger ticketing stock) is now limited to Eurostar. Barriers don't really exist on mainline rail stations in mainland Europe, excluding Eurostar, so the compatibility of the tickets with auto-barriers is not an issue. Eurostar has special custom barriers, which now use barcodes on ELGAR tickets at "check-in barriers".

Tickets for local and longer-distance journeys in mainland Europe don't tend to be issued on large ticketing stock nowadays - unless you pay a fee when you order the tickets online/via telesales. DB in Germany, NS in the Netherlands and SNCB in Belgium generally issue, with exceptions, small UK-style tickets from their machines and offices (although they are more like paper) to their customers.

Don't underestimate the rise in print at home ticketing - it's extremely common now in some countries, including Germany and Spain. It's now offered as the fee-free option on Eurostar and Deutsche Bahn (who offer it for all tickets - including rovers and rangers). It has practically wiped out the traditional ticketing on long distance journeys in Germany.

I don't buy that you can't put reservation details on a single ticket. If you buy an advance return from Irish Rail, the outbound, return, and reservations all go on one coupon.

island said:

I don't buy that you can't put reservation details on a single ticket. If you buy an advance return from Irish Rail, the outbound, return, and reservations all go on one coupon.

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I would agree with you there! I accept that there is no room to put it on the front of a ticket, there certainly is room to put information like that on the back as looking at the tickets I currently have on me half of the useable space (which would be more than enough to fit the reservation information) is taken up with a plusbus advert.

Printing the back of the ticket would require different ticket stock and different machines. Iarnród Éireann tickets have the whole shebang on the front of the ticket.

island said:

Iarnród Éireann tickets have the whole shebang on the front of the ticket.

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Are they the same size as ours?

WestCoast said:

Tickets for local and longer-distance journeys in mainland Europe don't tend to be issued on large ticketing stock nowadays - unless you pay a fee when you order the tickets online/via telesales. DB in Germany, NS in the Netherlands and SNCB in Belgium generally issue, with exceptions, small UK-style tickets from their machines and offices (although they are more like paper) to their customers.

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International tickets are still, generally, long form. I think this is CIV standard - even on DB online tickets, the top portion is in this format.

ainsworth74 said:

Are they the same size as ours?

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Yes they are. I'll try to find one from my collection at some point and upload it.

ainsworth74 said:

I would agree with you there! I accept that there is no room to put it on the front of a ticket, there certainly is room to put information like that on the back as looking at the tickets I currently have on me half of the useable space (which would be more than enough to fit the reservation information) is taken up with a plusbus advert.

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There is space on the front.

Advance tickets have a "valid from" date and a "valid until" date which are the same date. Easy to change that to a single "valid on" date and time.

You then only need three characters for the seat reservation.

You will always have a problem for journeys that have multiple reservations though.

You still see a surprisingly large number of ticket office issued large tickets on DB ICE/IC trains, the queues at Munich Hbf can be huge, although they have cut down on the number of windows

personally, I always use online tickets or automat tickets in germany, except if the reservation has to be made at a ticket office, e.g. Berlin-Malmo sleeper or taking a bike on an international train