First class said:
The issuing machine (STAR?) had printed text on top of the existing text in places.
The FRPP confirms that Shotton does use Fujistu Star.
Just looking for an answer regarding ticket validity when printed on defunct ticketing stock. When the BR terms and conditions are said to apply, and the usual ATOC legal disclaimer isn't present.
Saw a PRIV Discounted ALR on a purple ticket with a red compass logo in the middle. (The ticket had another week or so left before expiry).
(this is a ticket example
http://railticketsillustrated.digimig.co.uk/p2675340.html)
The ticket had been issued at Shotton.
Anyone else ever had a rover/ranger on similar stock in recent times?
I think what you are claiming is actually impossible.
All current accredited ticket office TISs use thermal printers to issue their tickets. For the printer to be able to actually print any information on the ticket, the stock being placed into the machine must have a thermochromic coating. It is this thermochromic coating that turns black where the heating has taken place which displays the text onto our tickets (you can try this yourself on a used ticket, if you place a heat source onto the ticket such as a radiator it turns the ticket black in that spot).
The stock you have linked to above is APTIS ticket stock which consists of plain paper card with a magnetic strip, it does not have any thermochromic coating because the APTIS ticket machine printed using ink in a dot matrix fashion.
Dedicated Rover stock was produced with a thermochromic coating in the early days of thermal printing TISs however this was using the RSP design used in the latter days of APTIS (
http://therailticketgallery.fotopic.net/p60496532.html). As you claim you saw the compass design, it is unlikely that you would have confused the two.
Even if Shotton did manage to print on a plain card ticket using a thermal printer, the compass design Rover stock was discontinued in 1996. Although some smaller ticket offices did hold this stock up until around 2006, I find it extremely unlikely Shotton would still have kept onto this stock into 2009 considering ATW relinquished APTIS machines in the relatively early days of APTIS replacement.
Can you give any further information as to what you actually saw as the above information does not collate?
Just as an aside, APTIS ticket machines were able to print using thermochromic coated stock, however they were prone to smudging because the shiny surface of the thermochromic coated stock was not really conducive to the dot matrix ink that was being applied.
NEW POST:
Definitely that ticket type- although I have just noticed the tickets illustrated site said a plastic version was also created with the same BR code, (presumably the same type as modern tickets?)
The "plastic version" The Rail Ticket Gallery mentions does not relate to the thermochromic coating, it relates to a layer of plastic within certain ticket stock that helps prevent the ticket from deteriorating from prolonged use. The wording on The Rail Ticket Gallery website explains this quite well in fact:
"There are three main types of card. Most tickets are made of plain card. Season tickets have a composite material consisting of a thin but tough layer of plastic sandwiched between two layers of card. A few ticket types such as NSE-era Gold Cards and one issue of the 4599/8 Rover ticket are made entirely of thin plastic."
Other thing- not recently, but when the likes of STAR first came out, it was quite common to still see the dark blue AP tickets being used with these machines, and they were fine.
As I have stated above, in the early days of thermal printing TISs, dedicated ticket stock was produced in the same fashion as the APTIS ticket stock and I can confirm that the dark blue AP design was one of the designs produced. More recently however there has been a real drive to produce as many tickets as possible on hopper orange stock presumably for cost cutting purposes.
