Buying tickets from conductors

[NeilCr]

Hope this is in the right place - and sorry if it's a simple answer

Anyway

I was sitting in the cafe at Ramsgate this morning having a coffee while waiting for a train. As was a conductor (is that the right phrase for a non HS1 on board person?)

After a while a couple of people came in to ask if they could get tickets in the cafe (apparently the office was closed and machine not working at that time). The (?) conductor overheard and advised them to get on the train and seek out the (?) conductor - explain the situation - and ask to buy a ticket. She underlined that they should be active in finding the on board person not just sit and wait for them to come round the train

Off they went and so did she. As I walked out to get my train she was selling tickets from her machine to someone on the concourse. By then the office was open but long queue - no-one was at the machine so assume OOO

As it happened she was the (?) conductor on my train

It just made me think - logically person with ticket machine and person wanting to buy a ticket - it should happen

But is there any "accounting" reason why not in terms of tallying machine to journey. The guy who bought the ticket from her was not on my train

It's pure curiosity. Certainly not getting at her - she was pleasant, cheery and helpful on the train

 

[bcarmicle]

Perhaps off-duty or she wasn’t yet signed into her ticket machine?

 

[LowLevel]

It doesn't happen so much anymore but there's nothing in theory to stop you from selling tickets at a station run by your own company.

At Lincoln for example the platform staff will sometimes stick their heads around the door if something has gone wrong with the booking office to ask if any guards around are willing to help queue bust.

I've had people ask me about more complicated tickets whilst I've been walking around my home station and it's been easiest to just sell them the ticket, so I have.

On the other hand if she was having a coffee in a cafe she will probably be on her own time on a break so not wanting to break the machine out which is fair enough.

 

[6Gman]

Hope this is in the right place - and sorry if it's a simple answer

Anyway

I was sitting in the cafe at Ramsgate this morning having a coffee while waiting for a train. As was a conductor (is that the right phrase for a non HS1 on board person?)

After a while a couple of people came in to ask if they could get tickets in the cafe (apparently the office was closed and machine not working at that time). The (?) conductor overheard and advised them to get on the train and seek out the (?) conductor - explain the situation - and ask to buy a ticket. She underlined that they should be active in finding the on board person not just sit and wait for them to come round the train

Off they went and so did she. As I walked out to get my train she was selling tickets from her machine to someone on the concourse. By then the office was open but long queue - no-one was at the machine so assume OOO

As it happened she was the (?) conductor on my train

It just made me think - logically person with ticket machine and person wanting to buy a ticket - it should happen

But is there any "accounting" reason why not in terms of tallying machine to journey. The guy who bought the ticket from her was not on my train

It's pure curiosity. Certainly not getting at her - she was pleasant, cheery and helpful on the train

I don't think there would be an accounting issue, unless perhaps it was done on a massive scale!

If, say, I was travelling from Crewe to Manchester (with an appropriate ticket) but - for whatever reason - decided I wanted to go to Sheffield, changing at Stockport with a tight connection, I'd not think twice about asking the Conductor (on the platform or on the train) "Can you sell me a Stockport-Sheffield return?"

And I can see no obvious reason why he/she wouldn't but I could be wrong.

EDIT: I can see @LowLevel has already answered while I was typing!

But there are experts - including working Conductors - who could tell us.

 

[NeilCr]

Perhaps off-duty or she wasn’t yet signed into her ticket machine?

Quite possibly

As I say - just trying to understand how it works

So if not signed in and/or can sell tickets to anyone? I'm all for it - it was how ticket machine income is accounted for that made me ponder a bit on my journey

It doesn't happen so much anymore but there's nothing in theory to stop you from selling tickets at a station run by your own company.

At Lincoln for example the platform staff will sometimes stick their heads around the door if something has gone wrong with the booking office to ask if any guards around are willing to help queue bust.

I've had people ask me about more complicated tickets whilst I've been walking around my home station and it's been easiest to just sell them the ticket, so I have.

On the other hand if she was having a coffee in a cafe she will probably be on her own time on a break so not wanting to break the machine out which is fair enough.

Thanks

Just to underline absolutely no criticism of her. She was helpful to all she spoke to

And quite agree with the point about her being on her break

 

[LowLevel]

Quite possibly

As I say - just trying to understand how it works

So if not signed in and/or can sell tickets to anyone? I'm all for it - it was how ticket machine income is accounted for that made me ponder a bit on my journey

It's all accounted for by the machine, it doesn't really matter who the machine operator is.

 

[Hadders]

In terms of the accounting:

The value of the fares sold via the machine should match the money taken from passengers (value paid by cash, cards etc). It doesn't matter where the tickets were sold to or from.

The value of the fares is distributed to train companies on whose services the passenger could travel in accordance with a system called ORCATS. As far as I know it isn't divided up by train services.

 

[Starmill]

It was previously common practice for ticket sales to be made on the platform at a terminating station by the onboard staff, to serve anyone who had joined the train at a station without a ticket machine. In general this offer was made because the train became too busy for them to sell tickets in the saloon, but it saved the time from queuing at the 'excess fares' window, or alternatively going out through the ticket gates and around to the main ticket office.

 

[redreni]

It doesn't happen so much anymore but there's nothing in theory to stop you from selling tickets at a station run by your own company.

At Lincoln for example the platform staff will sometimes stick their heads around the door if something has gone wrong with the booking office to ask if any guards around are willing to help queue bust.

I've had people ask me about more complicated tickets whilst I've been walking around my home station and it's been easiest to just sell them the ticket, so I have.

On the other hand if she was having a coffee in a cafe she will probably be on her own time on a break so not wanting to break the machine out which is fair enough.

I remember back in the mid 90s when I used to take the train to school, they used to have conductors queue busting at Slough every morning. I thought about it when I heard the rail minister on the radio comparing the proportion (not the number) of tickets sold at ticket offices today with 1994 and saying "some change is reasonable", as if ticket office staffing levels hadn't changed over that period. Slough used to have four of five ticket office windows (including the one on platform 5) all open and still needed queue busters!

 

[scrapy]

The only accounting issue is that there have been cases of guards queue busting where at many TOCs the guard gets commission on ticket sales but the booking office staff don't.

This leads to those wanting high priced tickets being directed to buy from the guard whilst the booking office staff deal with cheaper tickets, advances or reservations. This is frowned upon by management.

 

[johntea]

I can't blame the member of staff for just wanting to enjoy a coffee in peace, speaking from personal experience as someone that used to eat lunch at their desk I now have a strict set lunch break where I'm nowhere near my desk (I even book the time slot out as unavailable in my calendar just to enforce the point further!)

With regards to Post #4 funnily enough I saw this situation on my train home this evening, passenger had ticket from A to B but had decided they needed to extend to C instead so the guard happily sold them a B to C ticket - although not sure how the situation would have played out had they encountered a dreaded member of revenue protection instead! (also if the guard would have had the facility to excess their A to B to a A to C as presumably that would have been cheaper, possibly even zero due to the close proximity of B and C), it did also use to be a common trick from Northern guards to just sell all passengers from Station D to Station F a Station A to Station F ticket as it was exactly the same price and saved them having to 'reprogram' their machine but that is going back many years now!

 

[Birmingham]

also if the guard would have had the facility to excess their A to B to a A to C as presumably that would have been cheaper, possibly even zero due to the close proximity of B and C

They would have had the facility, but they might not have been bothered or known how. Or they wanted the commission from selling the new ticket Asking explicitly to excess the ticket may, or may not, have yielded a different result.

 

[RPI]

Happens quite often in the west, if there are queues or there is a window shut etc Guards/TE's/RPI's will go and help out.

I quite often do this at Paignton or Exmouth, usually eight minute or so turn around so I'll pop my head in and take people off the queue.