Do ticket gates write anything to magnetic strip tickets?

[BRX]

Or do they only ever read things from it?

For example... say I have an london to Inverness off peak return. I am using the return portion. I go through the gates at Inverness but leave the train at Edinburgh, where the gates are open. On the train from inverness to Edinburgh there's no ticket check so there's no mark on the ticket.

Then, a week later, I continue my journey, using the same ticket, from Edinburgh to London. Is there some scenario where the ticket gate pings an alert that notes the return ticket was already used, starting in Inverness a week ago, with no evidence that I left the system, and I am then suspected of having already used that ticket to get to London?

Or is it not as clever as that.

Recently I find ticket gates pinging alerts for my tickets more and more often, and always wonder what message it is telling whatever ticket inspectors are on the gate.

 

[matt_world2004]

I think they timestamp on the barriers when they have been out through this is why they don't work the barriers twice in a short time

 

[pdeaves]

Magnetic stripes contain some, but not much, information. I think it's pretty much limited to 'it's been put through a barrier' (or not valid route). There could be a million and one legitimate reasons why a ticket may go through many barriers but the information is not clever enough to know.

 

[BRX]

I think they timestamp on the barriers when they have been out through this is why they don't work the barriers twice in a short time

Do you mean the barriers remember the ticket, or something is written to the ticket?

 

[matt_world2004]

Do you mean the barriers remember the ticket, or something is written to the ticket?

I think there is a timestamp and station code written to the ticket one of the error codes is "ticket already used "

 

[Ken H]

I remember reading about the early mag tickets on the Victoria line when it first opened. They had to put the data on the ticket 4 times so the ticket could be read whichever way it was presented. So there was only a limited amount of data the magnetic coating could store.
I dont know if the current mag stripe tickets can pack more data in but I suspect its still limited. I also dont know if the data has to be stored from both ends or maybe the gates are cleverer than the 1960's ones in london

 

[Merseysider]

Recently I find ticket gates pinging alerts for my tickets more and more often, and always wonder what message it is telling whatever ticket inspectors are on the gate.

No idea if the list is still current or not but Railwaycodes gives an explanation of what each error code means.

 

[penguin8967]

Recently I find ticket gates pinging alerts for my tickets more and more often, and always wonder what message it is telling whatever ticket inspectors are on the gate.

Not sure if it's on iOS but on Android there's an app called 'UK Ticket Barrier Errors' with every error code listed and what it means. Also the website listed in the post above.

 

[BRX]

No idea if the list is still current or not but Railwaycodes gives an explanation of what each error code means.

Reading through these - there are several that seem to imply that something must be written to the ticket because how else could it be determined (unless the ticket gates connect back to some kind of central system).

 

[Wallsendmag]

The time and location of the gate is encoded on a CCST as it passes through the reader. It' not an exact time just the minutes past the hour I believe so you can tell it wasn't the issuing time.

 

[BRX]

The time and location of the gate is encoded on a CCST as it passes through the reader. It' not an exact time just the minutes past the hour I believe so you can tell it wasn't the issuing time.

This one:

Too long on journey (unexpectedly long time spent between journey start and end)

suggests it must be more than the minutes past the hour, though?

 

[Wallsendmag]

It's a long time since I've looked at one, we used to use Avantix to read the ticket. Very little is written by the gate though. This is with S&B gates though not Cubic.

 

[Haywain]

This one:



suggests it must be more than the minutes past the hour, though?

That relates to ITSO cards, not mag stripe tickets. Only 3 digit codes are relevant to CCST, other than 09 as I recall.

Cubic gates write the location and time to the ticket. The time is in units of 5 minutes so is not exact (I can't remember if the hour is written). This should be exactly the same as S&B gates.