Zone U1256 ticket without maltese cross

[Brucey]

This afternoon I bought a Zone U1256 to Glasgow Central advance ticket, route Virgin Trains Only on the Southern website. Collected this later on from West Ruislip.

The ticket is all correct, except there is no Maltese Cross on the route (which is shown on BRFares.com).

Do the LU ticket barriers look for the origin as being a Zone U* station or do they specifically look for the cross-London marker having been encoded?

The reason I ask is that I plan on using Ickenham, but if I may get problems I can use West Ruislip where access to the platform is available without passing through any ticket barriers.

 

[maniacmartin]

The ticket is correct. Zone U*** tickets are not printed with Maltese crosses. They still operate LU gates for one journey and LU staff know about them being valid.

 

[David Goddard]

I suppose the logic to this is that you are not crossing London (ie coming from outside of the zones, passing through the middle and out again the other side), merely starting from within the zones instead.

 

[OwlMan]

This afternoon I bought a Zone U1256 to Glasgow Central advance ticket, route Virgin Trains Only on the Southern website. Collected this later on from West Ruislip.

The ticket is all correct, except there is no Maltese Cross on the route (which is shown on BRFares.com).

Do the LU ticket barriers look for the origin as being a Zone U* station or do they specifically look for the cross-London marker having been encoded?

The reason I ask is that I plan on using Ickenham, but if I may get problems I can use West Ruislip where access to the platform is available without passing through any ticket barriers.

The LU barriers look at a section of the magnetic strip that is encoded with LU information.

 

[Matt E Raffles]

The ticket is correct. Zone U*** tickets are not printed with Maltese crosses. They still operate LU gates for one journey and LU staff know about them being valid.

In fact, in cases where a Zones U*** ticket has been wrongly issued with a 'maltese cross', the cross-London coding on the ticket overrides the Zones U*** coding meaning that the ticket will not work the gates at an Underground station that is not set up as a cross-London interchange.

The Underground gate logic requires that the ticket be issued exactly in line with the agreed specification (which is unfortunate where the cross-London marker is incorrectly added to the ticket).

 

[Brucey]

Wonderful. No worries using Ickenham then.

 

[RJ]

The ticket is correct. Zone U*** tickets are not printed with Maltese crosses. They still operate LU gates for one journey and LU staff know about them being valid.

Some of them are - I printed this one out earlier today;

 

[maniacmartin]

Route +Via London for a Zone U12 ticket? Very rare. I presume such a ticket would prevent changing at West Ruislip to the Central line and getting off at a West London station as the pasenger hasn't gone via London.

 

[IanD]

I've only ever bought 2 Zone U123... tickets and both have had a Maltese cross. Both were EC & Connections tickets.

 

[Paul Kelly]

Route +Via London for a Zone U12 ticket? Very rare. I presume such a ticket would prevent changing at West Ruislip to the Central line and getting off at a West London station as the pasenger hasn't gone via London.

Hmm, that's what the "VIA NORTHOLT UND" fares are for I suppose.