So, I was watching Mrs. Miniver the other night and at the beginning of the movie, she comes back to Beldon by train from London, and surrenders her ticket to Mr. Ballard, the rose-growing station master, on exiting the station. I’ve seen this before in movies so now I’m asking:[ul]
[li]What was the purpose of this?[/li][li]Was collecting your ticket on exit done only at suburban stations, like Beldon, or also in busy stations like London as well?[/li][li]Is it still done today?[/li][/ul] Here in the US, commuter service (closest to the suburban service as shown in the movie) you get a stiff ticket about about 3x¾ inches. It has the start and stop stations (or zones if the RR uses that system) indicated on it. Sometime during the trip, the conductor collects it, punches holes in it, and hands it back to you. Generally there’s a clip on the back of the seat in front of you and you can put the ticket in the clip; then you don’t have to fish it out of your pocket when the conductor comes by. When you leave, nobody cares about the ticket any more. Most people leave them in the clip and they get pulled and tossed on the conductor’s next trip through the car.
So, what purpose does getting a now-used ticket back at the end of the trip serve? Keeping a census on the number of people using that stop? A final check that you haven’t ridden past your paid destination? The mind boggles.
Perhaps there wasn’t a conductor on the train and Mrs Miniver needed to hand the ticket to the stationmaster at her destination to prove that she had actually purchased one.
About once a month I make a train trip to visit my mother. There is no conductor on the train to check passengers’ tickets. When I arrive at my destination, depending on the time of day, the stationmaster is often standing at the station exit to collect people’s tickets.
More and more railway stations in the UK are now installing automatic barriers where you have to present your ticket both before you get onto the train, and when you arrive at the other end. Sometimes your ticket will also be checked on the train by the conductor. The official name for this is “Revenue Protection”.
This used to be typical. In addition to what others have said, you handed in the ticket for two main reasons: firstly, to prove that you had a valid fare and were getting off at the right station; and secondly, to prevent the ticket from being altered and reused.
I remember having to surrender my ticket at London Waterloo only a couple of years back - but more recently, there hasn’t even been anyone there to show it to - but they’ve stepped up the vigilance in terms of checking tickets on board the train.
Don’t the ticket barriers on the exit suck the ticket back to hell (from where the rail companies are based for tax reasons)?
I seem to recall, it’s been a while since I travelled on trains (pre-Oyster Card), that once your ticket is used up the barriers keep hold of it, whereas season tickets just pass through the machine and pop back into your hand. Is that not the case anymore?
I also remember handing my tickets in at Victoria and Waterloo and being fined for travelling too far (I had to pay the extra £1 or so) when I rode past my stop and ended up in West Croydon one time.
There aren’t any barriers - just doorways from the platform to the main hall.
There are barriers in plenty of other places (more or less any entrance/exit to the underground, for example), but getting off a train arriving into Waterloo from another city, you just follow the herd through the door and into the main hall. If there’s a disinterested member of staff standing by the door, you wave your ticket in his general direction and he pretends to have read it.
On my last rail trip (admittedly some time ago) there was no one checking the ticket on board so I had to show to an inspector at my destination. He gave it back because it was a return ticket and obviously I needed it for the return journey.
In Edinburgh you have to insert your ticket into a slot to open a gate to let you on to the platform; an Inspector will probably check your ticken on the train, and you again need to insert your ticket (and not get it back) to get off the platform at the other end…
Smaller stations often have less controls and sometimes you’re expected to buy a ticket from the Inspector once you’re aboard…
Also, of course, there’s all sorts of combinations on particular routes. My local station is unmanned and the conductor sells/checks tickets, until two stops further on, after which there’s no (or rarely) any checks, because every station after Ipswich through to London has barriers. Sometimes he doesn’t get around to everybody before leaving the train at Ipswich, in which case it’s possible to buy a ticket on the platform side of the barriers at London. You can do this without penalty, but only because you’re buying a ticket from one of the more distant unmanned stations and not claiming you got on at somewhere like Chelmsford to try and get a cheap ride. There’s plenty of them in Chelmsford anyway (obligatory Essex joke, sorry). Yes, you could save a few quid in this situation if you’d got on at one of the more distant stations, and only wanted a single anyway, by asking for a ticket from mine, but that’s miniscule money for the company to worry about overall.
Also, it’s always fun getting on at my station and asking for something like a single to Darlington, which I’ve done in the past, and he has to haul out his multiple-volume fares manual to figure it out
Edit: nearly forgot - Euston Square
In years past in the UK ticket inspections on trains were done on a random basis. On most occasions your ticket would not be asked for while you were aboard the train. Thus the main points of inspection were the stations of departure and destination. A ticket (or platform ticket for those not boarding a train but accompanying others to say goodbye) would have to be shown to get on to the platform the train would be departing from. At the other end the ticket would have to be produced in order to exit the platform.
Something else just occurred to me, and a quick Google confirmed it: corridor rolling stock was only introduced in the 1890s, and some non-corridor compartment carriages were in use until the 1970s. With these, there was no way for tickets to be checked on the train.
Up to (at least) 9 compartments in carriage, perhaps six carriages in a typical train…much easier to check tickets at the station entrance. Railways used to be much more labour-intensive, don’t forget, even small stations could justify having a station-master and various other staff.
Well remembered, GorillaMan! That had completely slipped my mind. Yes, I remember Southern Region was still using these corridorless carriages for some trains on the London-Portsmouth line till the mid to late 70s.
Until sometime in the 1980s, on the regional trains in Toronto, you bought a ticket for your origin/destination pair before going in, tore it in half, put the first half in a farebox upon entering, and put the other half in another farebox upon exiting.
I think they gave the system up because there came to be too many origin/destination pairs, and the exit check really slowed things down at Union Station.
