How is the fare divided ... ?
A proportion of the fare is retained by the ticket seller to cover their costs. If I remember correctly, this is 9% for tickets sold by a ticket office and a lower proportion (5%?) for tickets sold online.
Unless otherwise agreed by the relevant train companies, the remainder is distributed between (some of) the train companies on which the ticket entitles the passenger to travel, in accordance with a complex formula calculated by
ORCATS (Operational Research Computerised Allocation of Tickets to Services). The precise details of the formula are confidential for commercial reasons, but some of the principles underlying the formula pop up from time to time in discussions on this sub-forum and in the railway press, particularly in Barry Doe's
Fare Dealer column in
RAIL magazine.
