Recent content by alphaomega

Sorry if this has been covered already, do we know when we will see the first class 800s in service from GWR? I heard July time but would be interested if there are more specifics so I can book a ticket and see what it's like.

Was on a VTEC train yesterday that had an EMT branded loco and EMT style seating however it had been refurbished. It was the 1505 LDS-PBO (1A37). Anyone else seen ones like this? I assume they are leasing these from EMT for a longer period of time (not just to cover the refurbishment of...

Interesting. ATOC data shows multiple flows & fares between Q119 and all of those clusters. Flows 0516325 (route 00200 — via London) and 0516326 (route 00700 — not via London) are between Q119 and Q485. They both have off-peak return tickets specified (SVR) of £94.50 and £93.00...

As in one purchased online & printed out? Nope. Just curious how they handle all the data, I recall reading somewhere that TfL keep track of all purchases but not sure if TOCs do too.

Do TOCs keep records of individual ticket sales (online, self-service or over the counter)? I would presume so in order to handle refunds but then how does this work with tickets issued/sold on trains?

I agree, I've definitely seen and experienced similar. It is interesting that ATOC will be introducing CCST with barcodes on and no magstripes though. I wonder if they will be used in conjunction with new scanners functioning more like the current CCST gates.

I've heard the self-print tickets use a AZTEC barcode on which the data is encrypted using a public / private key system. That seems more secure.

Interesting, perhaps I shall look further into some of the data being ASCII. You mention RSPS3000, do you have a copy of it? Why is it that you think it's 7 characters though? 72 is indeed divisible by 8 but that would suggest 9 characters rather than 7. Not 'prove', so to speak, but more to...

Definitely. It's security related research. I have read data from a number of tickets, unfortunately it's not ASCII encoded nor in a standard ISO format for magstripes. From what I've seen so far I've been able to isolate some fields, mainly related to the tickets last use which is written...

I suspect I shall have to do so, I just wanted to see if there was anything more either in way of information or advice as common knowledge first.

I imagine so though the quoted post does seem to suggest that a specification does exist that is available somewhere.

I'm doing some research into magnetic stripe encoding as part of my uni degree and haven't been able to find a great deal of information about the encoding of data on the magnetic stripes of train tickets. The most I've found is from a reply by barrykas here, and quoted below: Does anyone...