Colours of tickets

[me123]

Usually when I buy a train ticket, I get the orange ones that you normally get as you see below:

However, once I was buying a ticket at Motherwell (a rather big travel centre by SPT area standards). He opened the tray to remove a pair of orange tickets for the machine. I noticed there were, however, loads of other tickets! Purple ones, blue ones, green ones, colours that I've never seen before in my life! Well, not in rail tickets anyway. Presumably they're all used for something different. All I saw was the colour from the top, not what was on the tickets.

My question: what is each ticket colour used for?

 

[djw1981]

Season tickets (monthly and yearly), Gold Cards.Also all the railcards, plus any local multi-modal season tickets)

 

[Mintona]

The blue ones are season tickets which last longer than 1 month.

 

[Max]

The ticket in the picture above is actually printed on the old APTIS stock, now defunct of course. A ticket issued today would look more like this:

Note that they are completely blank, unlike old APTIS tickets. This of course means that the orange tickets can be used for pretty much anything, as all details are printed on by the machine - there used to many more ticket types in a rainbow of different colours! I remember when Reservation coupons used to look like this and excesses were like this!

 

[yorkie]

Take a look here: http://therailticketgallery.fotopic.net/

I'm sure Metcam will be along shortly to answer any questions about stock you have

 

[dan_atki]

As Max has said, under APTIS there was a whole multitude of different coloured stock for different types of ticket. Now, with more modern TIS, most are printed on the RSP No 9399 orange stock as shown above.

There are pictures of most of the stock that was used in sections 2(a) and 2(b) of http://therailticketgallery.fotopic.net/, along with some from newer systems.

 

[me123]

Thanks everyone; pretty much explained everything to me there

Would have been good to have all those different colours, though; I don't like the orange too much.

 

[MCR247]

When I bought a ticket from southern (a day ranger) it was green!

 

[Mojo]

There are also a lot of local tickets. In the West Midlands PTE area there are different coloured ticket stocks for different ticket types. I used to buy a Monthly season in Bristol which was on Common Ticket Stock (orange) but up here (depending on whether I bought train-only or network it would be on something different.

As others have said, the colours these days are a lot harder to come by than under APTIS.

 

[P156KWJ]

aren't the West Midlands day rangers still printed on either the old centro or NWM ones?

Also, the BR style LU travelcards just come out as normal orange ones with the roundel and 'Day Travelcard' printed in black on the top stripe. When I got one from a fastTicket machine it appeared to be a bit stretched, looked well messy! Oh well, later in the day I accidentally cheesed it because I put it in the same pocket as my phone, and it de-magnetised it

 

[eos]

>>>>aren't the West Midlands day rangers still printed on either the old centro or NWM ones?<<<

To the best of my knowledge, all tickets in West Midlands are now on common stock, except for the odd station with their purpley/blue 'parking' tickets, and if you can find them 'platform' tickets are black- often completely blank and just handed out time and time again...( like Shrewsbury)..

 

[P156KWJ]

what do those permit to travel things look like?

 

[Mojo]

To the best of my knowledge, all tickets in West Midlands are now on common stock, except for the odd station with their purpley/blue 'parking' tickets, and if you can find them 'platform' tickets are black- often completely blank and just handed out time and time again...( like Shrewsbury)..

All season tickets (n-network or n-train) are printed on special ticket stock; as are n-network daytripper.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

what do those permit to travel things look like?

The permit to travel "permits" look the same as the ones across the rest of the national network.

 

[dan_atki]

what do those permit to travel things look like?

 

[driver9000]

A parking permit issued from a booking office was/is purple.

 

[laseandre]

what do those permit to travel things look like?

This site will answer all your ticket questions and more: http://therailticketgallery.fotopic.net/

 

[Tom C]

The stocks on APTIS were:

Orange: Single trip tickets for singles and returns
Green: Weekly season
Grey (seems like its now blue on TRIBUTE): OTW season (basically anything from weekly up to 10 months)
Gold: Annual season
White with blue font: Advance
Pink: Suppliment
Dark Blue: Reservation
Purple: Rail Rover
Orange with large X: Excess

Most of these have been replaced by "hopper" stock however the Gold cards are still in circulation. SHERE still requires some OTW Point to Point tickets to be issued on the old Grey stock but all Travelcards except for annuals are on "hopper" stock.

 

[P156KWJ]

This site will answer all your ticket questions and more: http://therailticketgallery.fotopic.net/

I had a look at that, wasn't sure if those black and cream ones were still issued

 

[metrocammel]

Everything seems to be in hand here, I think most of the queries have been answered

The 'blue' stock used for monthly season is a) So they can be differentiated by the guard, and b) They are made of a composite plastic material, which makes them more durable for use in ticket barriers, and impossible to rip, hence why guards are instructed not to sell monthly seasons on Avantix machines- as the tickets are too flimsy - (and there's also the issue of it not being recorded in the season ticket database). As Mojo can tell you though, there seems to be discrepancies with the ticket issuing systems, and tickets converted to 'common stock' use (that is, non pre-printed stock- as Tribute type machines once used 'pre-printed' stock, as per APTIS- though heat sensitive).

Another oddity, is that the 'Tribute' TIS, still issues Freedom of Scotland Travelpasses on 'non pre-printed stock', therefore, if using Tribute, you either need RSP 7599/8 'Rail Rover' stock, or RSP7599/251 'Freedom of Scotland Travelpass' stock- both of these are seldom seen in even Tribute equipt ticket offices, so, in theory, if I was to ask for a Freedom of Scotland Travelpass at Sheffield Midland (who do not carry /8 or /251- or at least, that's what they've told me in the past!) they wouldn't be able to issue the ticket correctly (as it requires pre-printed boxes)- surely, that would that breach 'ATOC rules' (as fTPE put it )