Lost season ticket: woe is me, and a technical query

[Wombat]

Today I lost my monthly season ticket. Or rather, I threw my season ticket in the bin outside the station, wrongly believing that it was a different ticket. Clearly, I am an idiot twice over, as I naively assumed that I could go to the ticket office and they'd issue me with a replacement.

Anyway, I've sent off the form and the £20 and hopefully SW will take pity on me and issue a replacement. But it got me thinking: I had previously imagined that the automated ticket barriers checked each ticket against a live database to ensure validity, in which case it would be possible to deactivate my "lost" ticket and issue me with a new one. As that's evidently not the case, am I correct to assume that the ticket data is encoded on the magnetic strip and that there is no real-time check against a master database?

I suppose I can see why that might be the case; it would be awkward if all the ticket barriers stopped working when a station's internet connection died. It's just a bit disappointing, having previously imagined that there was some sort of marvellous real-time system that could uniquely identify my precious snowflake of a season ticket.

 

[transportphoto]

That is correct. The barriers do not make any connection with any database.
TP

 

[bb21]

As that's evidently not the case, am I correct to assume that the ticket data is encoded on the magnetic strip and that there is no real-time check against a master database?

That is correct. A limited amount of information is encoded on the magstripe and there is no real-time verification against any sort of database.

 

[Wombat]

OK, thank you! I will have to be a bit less carefree about my season ticket from now on...

 

[maniacmartin]

Instead of going to the ticket office, you'd have been better off going back to the bin!

The magnetic strip on the back of a paper rail ticket stores a very limited amount of information - less than is printed on the front in fact, and is not checked against any database.

Tickets issued on smartcards however, such as Oyster, can be hotlisted so that they no longer operate gates.

 

[andrewkeith5]

That is correct. A limited amount of information is encoded on the magstripe and there is no real-time verification against any sort of database.

Which is why the system isn't smart enough to understand perfectly valid options that aren't simply origin/destination, sadly for example break of journey or travelling to an intermediary station on a season ticket