exactly, why should someone have to wait for 20 mins if they can buy the same ticket on board, i even would have paid for a non discounted ticket on board just to avoid queing
Also, (for the record,) i did not act shifty of come up with some story, i even had the money in my hand ready to give to the guard, and the RPI officer, Hardly your typical fare dodger :P considdering too i had about £600 worth of VALID tikets on me
I certainly did not intend you to think I was suggesting you were.
However some years of involvement with Revenue Protection within BR taught that one of the clasic ruses used by fare evaders is to travel without a ticket but to pay when challenged on the train or at the arrival station.
You yourself admit it was a last minute decision so I suspect that whatever length queue there was (define "huge queue" by the way and how you determined 20 minutes was the waiting time?) you would have been hard pressed to get a ticket. Are there no automatic ticket machines ?
It is unfortunate that you landed at a station where there were RPIs, however in fairness to them you have not been charged with any Offence, albeit you easily could have been facing an 1889 S5 charge, and they have given you the benefit of the doubt by giving you the opportunity to explain the circumstances.
Things have moved on since BR days because as forecast, the open station system leaves the whole Railway wide open to fare evasion and abuse by those who will do their utmost to avoid paying if at all possible. It is for that reason that Compulsory Ticket Areas and Penalty Fares were implemented.
It is unfortunate that circumstances conspired if you like, to present you at Meadowhall as they did, but South and West Yorkshire, in common with other urban areas, does have a fare evasion problem and on that basis I am sure you will understand why the RPIs responded as they did.
In that case it is even worse that a customer is been persecuted when he has made reasonable efforts to purchase a ticket.
the victim in this case is obviously a railway enthusiast and will continue using the railways, if this happened to a 'normal' customer for whom the railway is purely a means of transport, do you honestly think they would ever use the railway system again?
Fare evasion is a serious issue on the Railways and the classic fare evasion ruse depends upon playing on the boundaries of the rules. At the end of the day the Conditions of Carriage state that it is for the passenger to ensure they have a valid ticket before they start their journey. We only have a subjective view as to the size and duration of the queue and the passenger himself admits that it was a last minute decision given he had a 40 minute wait between trains.
I find it hard to believe that there were no automatic ticket machines, however payment on the train is intended for stations which have no facilities not stations which have full ticket issuing facilities so there is no reason why the Guard should have been expecting anypone to turn up without a ticket from Sheffield.
Matters may be unfair but then so is the fact that you will get a fine and points for being just 5 mph over the 30 mph limit in the middle of the night when the same penalty would apply to someone doing 10mph over the limit outside a school at going home time.