I travelled Colne Preston last week, midday, over half passengers boarding from unstaffed stations buying tickets on board, all paying cash. on the front half of the pacer the guard did not do a single credit card transaction. Most fares under a fiver.
I don't think people in the north use credit/debit cards anything like as much as those in the south or in big cities, I know it would never cross my mind to use a card for a couple of quid.
I would love to know how much card only machines collect as a proportion of revenue form any specific unstaffed station.
A friend was at Lords earlier in the year and most of the queues for the bar he was in were "Contactless only", apparently as it is so much quicker than cash for the bars (with the 4 pint limit per purchase even with Lords/London prices it is less than £30).
Wait, how is that odd? How is it odd for anyone to have never visited 'Scandinavia'? And what's more what does that have to do with Northern station improvements?It's odd that I've never visited Scandinavia when they seem, generally speaking, to be way ahead in just about every progressive aspect of society.
Should paid attention!That was a TransPennine Express ticket machine. The screen is big because they wanted a big screen.
That's also an issue with the few installed at Paddington (inside the new ticket office on the right), it is very hard to see the blurry text up close. Although I wouldn't be surprised if it was the screen that was low resolutionPresumably at some point they’ll maybe scale the software a bit to take advantage of the larger screen!
Yes TPE are binning the Siemens system that they had and are replacing it with the ATOS system. This means a change of announcer from Rob to Anne who is pretty ubiquitous in England.I know this is a TPE managed station, but it is in Northern Land so sort of relevant.
Dewsbury has got new announcements, a female voice this time. Word timing seems to be a lot better than the previous male voice, but not quite perfect. At the moment, platform specific announcements are going out on both platforms, but I guess that will be fixed in due course.
Work also going on to install barriers on P1 (Leeds bound).
From experience, they were never listed while being replaced - so I'd guess they're not working for some other reason. 22 is the highest I've seen though!A lot of TVMs listed out-of-order today: https://www.journeycheck.com/northernrail Are there a lot being replaced at the moment or do they not like the cold weather?
Could be as simple as running out of change.
Heald Green, I am informed, is having more "betterment" works. The last works covered the improvement to the booking office section and the link from the waiting room to the platform for disabled passengers, so what are these latest works there?
Well that's madness - it effectively puts trains possibly up to 9.40am (if there's a queue at the ATM) into peak hours, and also trains at the end of peak hours in the evenings. Sly and underhand if true; and if it happened to me I'd be writing to Northern's Public Disaster Response team.....grrr. Needs publicising in the media - especially if Northern are the only train company pulling that one.From my experience today it appears you can only buy an off peak ticket during off peak times. If your train is at 9.31am you can’t arrive at 9.25am and buy an off peak ticket. You need to wait until 9.30am when the ticket types change.
If you're not sold the cheapest available ticket by a TVM the TOC are obliged to refund you but with Northern you might have to wait 6 months!
From my experience today it appears you can only buy an off peak ticket during off peak times. If your train is at 9.31am you can’t arrive at 9.25am and buy an off peak ticket. You need to wait until 9.30am when the ticket types change.