Nationwide Oyster Card.

[XmisterIS]

Wouldn't it be great? Just swipe your card through the barrier in and out, and it just deducts the price of your journey from the credits that you've put on the card. It would make traveling by train so much easier! Gone would be the huge rush-hour queue of people waiting to buy a ticket from a "computer says no" clerk behind a screen in a dusty old booth, which is what we currently have here out in the provinces!

 

[Moodyman]

It'll be even better when mobile payments are introduced. Swiping your mobile (like a debit card) to pay for items.

Can you imagine the snobbery when that happens?

I paid for it with my iPhone whilst you did it with a £20 Nokia, therefore I is betta than u.

 

[subaqua]

Wouldn't it be great? Just swipe your card through the barrier in and out, and it just deducts the price of your journey from the credits that you've put on the card. It would make traveling by train so much easier! Gone would be the huge rush-hour queue of people waiting to buy a ticket from a "computer says no" clerk behind a screen in a dusty old booth, which is what we currently have here out in the provinces!

or integrate it properly so you could put the cheap advance 1st class ticket that cost you only 20 quid return from london to chester as you happened to book a ticket the morning they released the new lot of cheap tickets .

 

[wiggydiggy]

For local services perhaps yes, for longer distance I will always check all the sites I can for cheap tickets. If you just had swipe and go they'd be raking it in as people would not check for the cost?

 

[Norm]

I would hope that the idea of requiring thorough investigation to determine the cheapest ticket prices could be kicked into touch at the same time.

 

[XmisterIS]

I would hope that the idea of requiring thorough investigation to determine the cheapest ticket prices could be kicked into touch at the same time.

I agree, when I was a kid back in the 80's I seem to recal that you just turned up at the ticket office and bought a first class or second class ticket, which was the same price no matter time of day, etc. I could be wrong though, I was only young when the rail network was privatised.

 

[Red Light]

I would hope that the idea of requiring thorough investigation to determine the cheapest ticket prices could be kicked into touch at the same time.

I hope not! All the split tickets and other tricks for saving money would end and you can bet the fares will all go up not down to achieve that

 

[snorri]

I seem to recal that you just turned up at the ticket office and bought a first class or second class ticket,

....... and had to stand, or sit on your case, in the corridor for the the duration of the journey because the ticket merely entitled you to board the train without any guarantee of a seat.

Aye it was great in the old days.

 

[Beebo]

....... and had to stand, or sit on your case, in the corridor for the the duration of the journey because the ticket merely entitled you to board the train without any guarantee of a seat.

Aye it was great in the old days.

Nothing has changed then, it's just got more expensive.

 

[Red Light]

You are MrSaveItBigTime on Quidco and ICMFP!

Its not the removal of the savings available to anoraks I'm talking about but a consequence of removing them would be fares having to rise, sometimes significantly for everybody. For example I regularly use a ticket from A changing at B for C which is one third cheaper than travelling A to B. You can bet the way that that would be resolved is by raising the fare form A to C by at least a third and since A and C are major destinations, that is not going to be popular with all the people making that journey. There are thousands of those types of fare anomalies in the system which us anoraks exploit but which if removed would affect everybody with higher fares.

 

[subaqua]

Nothing has changed then, it's just got more expensive.

depends on what you book. when national express had the east coast franchise they used to charge an extra £2.50 to reserve a seat when booking a ticket. virgin and london midland guaranteed a seat. GWR reserved seats but you generally got some west country yokel sitting in a reserved seat and not moving even when the guard came along and asked em to move.

 

[Black Sheep]

....... and had to stand, or sit on your case, in the corridor for the the duration of the journey because the ticket merely entitled you to board the train without any guarantee of a seat.

Aye it was great in the old days.

Nothing has changed, i've undertaken many journeys in the luggage rack as a student

depends on what you book. when national express had the east coast franchise they used to charge an extra £2.50 to reserve a seat when booking a ticket. virgin and london midland guaranteed a seat.

Virgin charged me extra to book a seat, then sent a train which didn't have a carriage 'D' in which my seat was located.

'tough' was their response

 

[dellzeqq]

....... and had to stand, or sit on your case, in the corridor for the the duration of the journey because the ticket merely entitled you to board the train without any guarantee of a seat.

Aye it was great in the old days.

just like Virgin CrossCountry

 

[Crackle]

Liverpool is getting a Walrus card, goob, goob, ga choob......

I wonder if some wag did that deliberately.

 

[XmisterIS]

Nothing has changed then, it's just got more expensive.

That's not entirely true ... I remember the days of good old British Rail sandwiches. Once, on the 4 hour journey from London to Doncaster to see my Mother's family, my Mother bought egg sandwiches (because there was nothing else) from the buffet. Both of us had developed vicious diarrhea before we'd even made it past Luton. To this day I can't even think about eating an egg sandwich without feeling sick!