Penalty Fares at Ticketless Stations

[DLA365]

I was just browsing the details of one of my local stations, Angel Road and was quite surprised to see that it neither has ticket machines nor it is manned at any time.

What surprised me even more is that the National Rail website states that it is a Penalty Fare station (and the services that serve this station usually do not have guards). How is it justifiable to charge Penalty Fares?!

Link: http://nrekb.com/stations/index.html?a=findStation&station_query=angel+road

 

[steve158]

it's got to be a mistake.

for example in the west midlands, alvechurch and barnt green are exempt from the penalty fares scheme as they are unmanned.

there's been talk of bringing in penalty fares in the east midlands. right, how do you enforce that at sileby, say??

 

[DLA365]

it's got to be a mistake.

Maybe One saw that some of the stations have ticket machines and decided to make the whole line Penalty Fare enforced, without checking all the stations? :?

Northumberland Park - which is the next station on the line has ticket machines, but is only manned for a few hours in the morning peak on weekdays. What do people do when they need to buy a ticket which is not listed on the machine?

 

[Techniquest]

Also, what happens if you can only pay by card, having no cash? I know this has happened to me lots of times, as I dislike having cash as a MOP. Most Fastticket machines don't have coin-taking facilities, although there are new ones now that do.

 

[jd]

Surely ALL stations have Permit to Travel machines though? Therefore you have to buy one of those or you get charged penalty fare?

OT: I once went to Kings Norton station on the West Mids local network, heading for BNS. The ticket office was closed so I had to get a permit. I put 5p into the machine, and no-one came round on the train. The ticket is only 80p anyway though.....

 

[DLA365]

Surely ALL stations have Permit to Travel machines though? Therefore you have to buy one of those or you get charged penalty fare?

I haven't seen a Permit to Travel machine but will do a thorough search the next time I go to Northumberland Park. BTW, don't the Permit to Travel machines only get activated when the ticket machine is out of order? Or is it when the station is unmanned?