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Ticket gates not accepting ticket

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Harbon 1

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Travelling up from Doncaster to Glasgow QS, on an advance with a choice of which train to catch from Edinburgh, but my dad tells me and we had the same today, the ticket gates for the west facing bays don't accept the tickets,

Does anybody know why this happens?

Cheers,
Matt
 
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island

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The programming of ticket gates is more of an art than a science. If you can tell us the error code or message you get, then we might be able to narrow down the reasons somewhat, but the most likely reasons are either that the gates think you are off route or that they have been programmed to reject a category of tickets which happens to include yours, so that they can be properly examined by the person on the manual gate.
 

Harbon 1

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I can't remember the code, it just said ticket rejected. Would it be because the ticket allows an option of train? Therefore allowing the ticket inspector to check the ticket and make sure the passenger doesn't jump on another train?
 

bb21

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That is a possibility. Ticket gates can be set to reject Advance tickets.
 

Urban Gateline

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At what station was the ticket rejected? If the ticket was between Doncaster and Glasgow then it rightly wouldn't work in Edinburgh for example as Advance tickets do not allow a break of journey.
 

DaveNewcastle

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I'm assuming that the OP meant the barrier line along the west-facing bays at Waverley station.
These can be set to reject a number of valid tickets for inspection and frequently do. That might apply to Advances, child or Railcard discounted tickets etc.
However, it is generally necessary to pass through that barrier on an Advance from the north to the south as so very many journeys will require a change at Waverley. There's usually enough staff present to assist and the delays are minimal in my experience.
 

swt_passenger

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At what station was the ticket rejected? If the ticket was between Doncaster and Glasgow then it rightly wouldn't work in Edinburgh for example as Advance tickets do not allow a break of journey.

Passing through a gateline to change trains (as originally posted) is most definitely NOT a break of journey...
 

Urban Gateline

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Passing through a gateline to change trains (as originally posted) is most definitely NOT a break of journey...

Thanks for pointing that out, I'm not from up north so had to look up the station layout and then became aware of the location of the barriers, so I understand the situation better now. However barriers will never be able to accept Advance tickets at somewhere other than the origin or destination, unless the barrier staff do the unthinkable and set to "accept all tickets"!
 

swt_passenger

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Thanks for pointing that out, I'm not from up north so had to look up the station layout and then became aware of the location of the barriers, so I understand the situation better now. However barriers will never be able to accept Advance tickets at somewhere other than the origin or destination, unless the barrier staff do the unthinkable and set to "accept all tickets"!

I agree - and as we have been told before the barriers at ANY station where there are multiple interchange gatelines might not cope with the same situation for Anytime or Offpeak tickets either, unless specifically programmed one by one - because they'd suffer the same issue of origin and destination not being that station.

In other words, the original problem might have nothing to do with the tickets being 'Advance' at all...
 

Urban Gateline

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I agree - and as we have been told before the barriers at ANY station where there are multiple interchange gatelines might not cope with the same situation for Anytime or Offpeak tickets either, unless specifically programmed one by one - because they'd suffer the same issue of origin and destination not being that station.

In other words, the original problem might have nothing to do with the tickets being 'Advance' at all...

This is true in some part, however Anytime tickets mostly allow Break of Journey and do tend to work in barriers of intermediate stations along the route (I know because I've witnessed it at my barriers), ok not 100% of the time but many times they will work whereas Advance tickets 100% will not work outside the Origin and Destination stations!

Overall it's only a minor inconvenience and probably too much effort to change the settings on the barriers one by one for every possibility, much easier to show staff there who will check the ticket and allow the passenger through if the ticket is indeed valid!
 

exile

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Had the same experience at the weekend with tickets from Warrington to Chatham and return not being accepted at St Pancras, Chatham and Stratford International. Bizarre!
 

island

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This is true in some part, however Anytime tickets mostly allow Break of Journey and do tend to work in barriers of intermediate stations along the route (I know because I've witnessed it at my barriers), ok not 100% of the time but many times they will work whereas Advance tickets 100% will not work outside the Origin and Destination stations!

I'll have to disagree with that. An example would be an advance ticket from Orpington to Newcastle, which will be accepted at London Bridge barriers.
 

swt_passenger

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I'll have to disagree with that. An example would be an advance ticket from Orpington to Newcastle, which will be accepted at London Bridge barriers.

Is that possibly because the barrier sees a cross London marker, and that will override some other checks?

I don't know for certain, but suspect that little bit of coding prevents quite a lot of ticket barrier failures, and removes the need to program in all sorts of origin/destination pairs?
 

causton

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I'll have to disagree with that. An example would be an advance ticket from Orpington to Newcastle, which will be accepted at London Bridge barriers.

Interesting. I believe this is a minority, as Advance tickets should be rejected in my opinion to check the routing and timing of the passenger... for example, my Hatfield to Brighton advance didn't work in Hatfield, Kings Cross, Victoria or Brighton barriers! Of course, the reason is valid, so I had no issue with it, but that is a large flaw at London Bridge given the low rates of on-train ticket checks...
 

4SRKT

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Thanks for pointing that out, I'm not from up north so had to look up the station layout and then became aware of the location of the barriers, so I understand the situation better now. However barriers will never be able to accept Advance tickets at somewhere other than the origin or destination, unless the barrier staff do the unthinkable and set to "accept all tickets"!

The barriers at Leeds accept advances starting at Shipley, so it's clearly possible.

 

Deerfold

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The barriers at Leeds accept advances starting at Shipley, so it's clearly possible.


And finishing at Keighley - I used to regularly use the station facilities at LDS on KGX - KEI or SON advances at Leeds due to the dire connections northbound (usually about 2 minutes giving a 50/50 chance of making it or half an hour to wait) and the only reason my ticket would be rejected would be "No Passback" if I tried to reenter too soon for the machines.
 

4SRKT

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I also regularly use EC + connections advances beyond London and never have issues at St Pancras or Waterloo. I'm using a Barming > Saltaire advance week so let's see what happens at Victoria!
 

craigwilson

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Is that possibly because the barrier sees a cross London marker, and that will override some other checks?

I don't know for certain, but suspect that little bit of coding prevents quite a lot of ticket barrier failures, and removes the need to program in all sorts of origin/destination pairs?

London Bridge has rejected an off peak return Margate - Manchester outward portion on me before (so with cross-London marker). It was a weekday, and I was going for the first off-peak Pendolino of the day to Manchester (the 0940), so I was passing through at approximately 8:55 am.

I imagine that the gatelines are just set up to reject all off peak tickets at that time, even though they might be valid!! :)
 

Brucey

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FGW gatelines (well, at least they did about 6 months ago) accept advance tickets. The gateline at Temple Meads also accepted tickets to/from local stations.

ATW also seem very generous as Cardiff Central even accepted my FOSS rover and a variety of advances.

Some TOCs (like Southern) seem to reject advances so they can be checked manually by staff.

The FCC barriers at Bedford reject almost anything I feed them, except a GroupSave I had two weeks ago. Perhaps they are set to reject railcard discounted tickets? Or it could just be because all the rejected tickets have been poorly encoded by the Avantix Mobile.
 

island

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I have been given to understand that FCC is quite vigilant in manually rejecting railcard-discounted tickets for manual inspection.

Check the code number displayed on the gates next time and we can confirm it.
 

Essexman

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Gates at Upminster invariably fail to open for long distance tickets. For example today both out & return on Upminster - Andover First Off-Peak Day Return. Tickets work at Fenchurch Street, Underground & other london terminii, but rarely at Upminster.
 

jon0844

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My Carnet tickets (HAT to London Terminals) get rejected at Hatfield with error 115.

Work fine at King's Cross and when returning to Hatfield, both entry and exit. That's not a code that suggests its flagged to be manually checked as with railcard and child tickets (both are always set this way at Hatfield).
 

sheff1

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My experience is that the gates at the west-facing bays at Waverley never accept a ticket from or to an English destination. I actually queried this once with someone in the Supervisors office but they could not explain why this was the case.
 

causton

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I have been given to understand that FCC is quite vigilant in manually rejecting railcard-discounted tickets for manual inspection.

Check the code number displayed on the gates next time and we can confirm it.

Indeed, Google will tell you a few useful ones :)

Interestingly I use a few FCC stations and they haven't rejected mine as of late, but did do earlier in the year - perhaps they have phases!
 

jon0844

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I've travelled twice this week (and before that not for over a month) and will travel again later today.

On Tuesday, Hatfield had loads of RPIs present - including my favourite RPI (who I didn't have time to chat to, as I didn't fancy being stuck with him for another four hours). I wasn't checked on the train going in, but was on the way back home.

Yesterday, I was checked by a single RPI into London and about 6 on the way home (a 4-car service) but as I walked through, it became apparent that they weren't having a lot of hits - not even in first class.

Perhaps their tactics are paying off, even with the gates being open at Finsbury Park.

Finally, if railway workers are frustrated that BTP never take their calls for help seriously - there were 5 of them patrolling Finsbury Park (3 on platform 3, 2 on platform 5/6) last night.
 

pitdiver

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FGW gatelines (well, at least they did about 6 months ago) accept advance tickets. The gateline at Temple Meads also accepted tickets to/from local stations.

ATW also seem very generous as Cardiff Central even accepted my FOSS rover and a variety of advances.

Some TOCs (like Southern) seem to reject advances so they can be checked manually by staff.

The FCC barriers at Bedford reject almost anything I feed them, except a GroupSave I had two weeks ago. Perhaps they are set to reject railcard discounted tickets? Or it could just be because all the rejected tickets have been poorly encoded by the Avantix Mobile.

The barriers at Bedford always accept my Priv tkts never had any issues.
 

swt_passenger

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My experience is that the gates at the west-facing bays at Waverley never accept a ticket from or to an English destination. I actually queried this once with someone in the Supervisors office but they could not explain why this was the case.

Someone working in the gateline field once posted here that every individual remote origin and destination required would have to be loaded into the gateline computer manually, there is no looking up journeys on the fly.

So if it isn't done they won't work - same as anywhere else...
 
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