Where have you been? Keeping train tickets or a log book?

[Marionaki]

I used to keep my tickets to remember which places I have visited by train, doing day trips. Then, one day when I was having a clear out, I threw all my tickets away. I wish I would have at least kept a diary, cause I ended up going to a place twice and only remembered it when I saw the railway station on arrival! Or I should have marked my trips on my train map.

 

[Minilad]

Do what a lot of people do and keep a spreadsheet with details of journeys in

 

[Marionaki]

Do what a lot of people do and keep a spreadsheet with details of journeys in

Thanks, that would have been an idea, not for me 11 years ago, but surely some people have different ways to records their train trips?

 

[HST Power]

I keep all my tickets. I have a massive stack of them, going back about six years.

I used to do a spreadsheet - these days I don't bother, I travel fairly frequently but most of the time I'm doing the same journey(s), so my average mileage comes in at around 1000 - 1500 per annum.

Perhaps if you're looking for something else, it might be worthwhile invested into a notepad, or some form of pocket diary?

 

[yorksrob]

I keep all my tickets. I have a massive stack of them, going back about six years.

Glad it's not just me then !

It was interesting to go back and see just how much I'd spent on train travel over a year.

 

[Techniquest]

I keep a log of how much I spend a year on train travel in a memo file on my phone. Need to get the calculator out later and see how much it is now, but probably getting to at least £250 now so far this year. Not a bad investment considering just how much I've travelled (around 1,900 miles for £250, if those figures are indeed correct, is not bad when you consider the large variety I've had too) but I see that figure increasing to more like £1,000 by the end of the year without any difficulty!

I'd keep more tickets, but I just can't be bothered. Some of them I use as bookmarks in my NREA at present, which at present are a single on line 401 Eindhoven to Eindhoven Airport, a West Yorkshire Day Rover and the return portion of a Hereford to Birmingham day return. I must admit though, I'd be curious to see how many WMDRs I've bought over the years, I think it was 3 of them last year and 2 of them already this year. With the other years too, I'd not be surprised if I'd done around 20 of them!

As for logging my journeys, I do this in multiple ways currently. These are normally typing them into a memo file on my phone as I go, then if it's a trip where I've got the time to do so I'll also save them in the RailMiles Offline app on my phone for uploading later, then they also go into the notebook for another backup, then since I got a laptop a while ago I also make a backup on there in a Word file and finally I write them all into my A4 book as well. Once the paper and laptop versions are done, I normally then bin the memo file on my phone, although sometimes I keep it for a while to enjoy the memories on my long commutes Example of the electronic moves book is below:

455842, in 62750, Purley Oaks-East Croydon (0959,arr 1004)
319455+319424, in 62924, East Croydon-Elephant and Castle (via Tulse Hill (1003,2d,arr 1026)
51548+51547 Elephant and Castle-Oval (1037,arr 1041) (Northern)
51646+51545 Oval-Kennington (1044,arr 1045) (Northern)
51600+51601 Kennington-Tottenham Court Road (1046,arr 1055) (Northern)
92031+92038+92042+92075 Tottenham Court Road-Mile End (1058,arr 1112) (Central)
7073+7014 Mile End-Upton Park (1113,arr 1124) (District)
21389+21390 Upton Park-Barking (1127,arr 1134) (H+C)
357010, in 67760, Barking-Upminster (1134, arr 1141)

That's just a small number of the moves I made during Red Pen Fest, trust me when I say there were a lot more! As for how it looks on RailMiles, this is my lot from 2014 not including Red Pen Fest's moves, as I've still got to process those yet. RailMiles is definitely worth the investment in my opinion:

http://techniquest.railmiles.org/

 

[breadfan]

Depends how much detail you want to log. The closest I get to taking notes for where I have been is 'checking in' places on Facebook. Usually a good ale boozer.

I recently got a shoebox full of old tickets from the loft at my parents'. Many with the loco numbers each ticket got me haulage from written on the back. Sadly no train I.D or I would maybe be able to help fleshing out some workings on some of those great retro sites you see.

 

[ATW Alex 101]

I keep tickets as well as collect them. That's among other items of old railway memorabilia. I also use a spreadsheet as an alternative to railmiles to record my journeys in.

 

[Marionaki]

I keep a log of how much I spend a year on train travel in a memo file on my phone. Need to get the calculator out later and see how much it is now, but probably getting to at least £250 now so far this year. Not a bad investment considering just how much I've travelled (around 1,900 miles for £250, if those figures are indeed correct, is not bad when you consider the large variety I've had too) but I see that figure increasing to more like £1,000 by the end of the year without any difficulty!

I'd keep more tickets, but I just can't be bothered. Some of them I use as bookmarks in my NREA at present, which at present are a single on line 401 Eindhoven to Eindhoven Airport, a West Yorkshire Day Rover and the return portion of a Hereford to Birmingham day return. I must admit though, I'd be curious to see how many WMDRs I've bought over the years, I think it was 3 of them last year and 2 of them already this year. With the other years too, I'd not be surprised if I'd done around 20 of them!

As for logging my journeys, I do this in multiple ways currently. These are normally typing them into a memo file on my phone as I go, then if it's a trip where I've got the time to do so I'll also save them in the RailMiles Offline app on my phone for uploading later, then they also go into the notebook for another backup, then since I got a laptop a while ago I also make a backup on there in a Word file and finally I write them all into my A4 book as well. Once the paper and laptop versions are done, I normally then bin the memo file on my phone, although sometimes I keep it for a while to enjoy the memories on my long commutes Example of the electronic moves book is below:

455842, in 62750, Purley Oaks-East Croydon (0959,arr 1004)
319455+319424, in 62924, East Croydon-Elephant and Castle (via Tulse Hill (1003,2d,arr 1026)
51548+51547 Elephant and Castle-Oval (1037,arr 1041) (Northern)
51646+51545 Oval-Kennington (1044,arr 1045) (Northern)
51600+51601 Kennington-Tottenham Court Road (1046,arr 1055) (Northern)
92031+92038+92042+92075 Tottenham Court Road-Mile End (1058,arr 1112) (Central)
7073+7014 Mile End-Upton Park (1113,arr 1124) (District)
21389+21390 Upton Park-Barking (1127,arr 1134) (H+C)
357010, in 67760, Barking-Upminster (1134, arr 1141)

That's just a small number of the moves I made during Red Pen Fest, trust me when I say there were a lot more! As for how it looks on RailMiles, this is my lot from 2014 not including Red Pen Fest's moves, as I've still got to process those yet. RailMiles is definitely worth the investment in my opinion:

http://techniquest.railmiles.org/

Wow! That's a lot! And probably a lot of fun, too! And not easy to match!
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
Thank you all for the useful ideas/tips!
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
Thank you all for the useful ideas/tips!

 

[richw]

All of my old tickets are in my railcard wallet. not deliberately I just don't get round to emptying them out.

 

[Marionaki]

I just found a few, too, in my railcard wallet. But many of them are very faded, hardly readable! Not very well preserved!

 

[D6975]

When I started recording all my moves it was in a 'moves' book - no smartphones or netbooks or laptops back then. Now I use a spreadsheet. There was a time when I did a heart of england rover about 3 out of every 4 weeks during the summer timetable - must have bought loads of the things. I only used to use it from Fri night to Sun night too, and it was 7 day only back then, no 3 day variant. Now that shows you how much they used to cost compared to today, wouldn't dream of wasting days like that now.

 

[theblackwatch]

I still record all my moves in a book. All my loco moves and mileages get put on excel, but am somewhat behind (1990s!) with doing this for units so unsure when or if I will ever get round to doing them. Similarly, foreign locos go onto Excel. Where I have been gets recorded by marking off in a Rail Atlas.

 

[alex17595]

I have a spreadsheet with:
- Origin/Destination station
- Mileage
- Timed/ Actutal departure and arrival times.
- Delay
- Cost
- Journey time

Done 1600 miles for £101 with £6 in refunds over 2054 minuites of traveling!

 

[craig87034]

I have a moves book, excel spread sheet on all moves and mileages spread sheets on excel but only for my favourite classes. I also type up rateable gen/workings

 

[SS4]

I usually keep interesting tickets and first time tickets. I do not need to keep tickets for a journey I'm making frequently but I will for the first time (ie Eurostar) and for interesting tickets (ie Daytrippers). I had created a spreadsheet in Libreoffice Calc but I always forget to update it

 

[Starmill]

I'm not checking this for quality control excessively, but this is an example of how mine now appears. It's mainly just so I can be nostalgic about it to be honest, and to keep my mileage updated, but again I'm not really chasing the miles at all (not that that doesn't mean that they aren't arriving!). I do keep tickets unless they are retained by barriers (which I will try to avoid if they are interesting!) or need to send them off for claims of any kind, so its far from a complete record.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

My good lady wife has found a use for the smaller of the Ferraro Rocher plastic boxes and uses these as a useful way to keep all our old rail tickets in chronological order, with the newest on the top. We are now on to our fifth such box.

 

[33056]

Another vote here for using a spreadsheet (example attached) though I do scribble stuff down using pen and paper whilst actually travelling and am still trying to catch up with typing moves up up until circa 2002.
Loco hauled moves are kept on a separate sheet for each class to keep track of mileage and which ones are required for haulage (I don't bother doing this with units) IE 071 locos example attached.

There is no real point in keeping track of where I have been with tickets as I rarely use them, most of my trips are with various passes or Oyster on LU. Just for a laugh I did try and do a cost analasis of a Global Interrail ticket (valid for 22 days) the other year but lost interest when the purchase price was exceeded after around 10 days