Challenged with printed tickets two toc journey

[colinjmx5]

Interesting journey from Manchester to Brighton return advanced singles via trainline

Printed tickets at Salford central, no idea if this was cause of issues seen

Used at Manchester, barriers said invalid but allowed through when manual check done. Checked on train and said ok.
At Victoria again barriers said no to Gatwick express route. Allowed via manual check.
At Brighton barriers again barriers said no and manual check asked if I had return ? Confused me as I said two advance single there and back.
Allowed through to go.

Same in reverse Manchester with manual checks and ask.

Was this result of printing at Salford central or do barriers at Manchester/victoria/brighton not understand two toc train routes ?

 

[Hadders]

Where the ticket is printed won't make any difference. The magstripe on the ticket could've become corrupt in some way, or more likely blocks are often put on certain types of tickets so that manual checks can take place. At my local station this is done with Advance tickets and also tickets discounted with a railcard.

 

[furlong]

When this happens, you need to look at the display on the barrier to see if it is showing a number (usually 2 or 3 digits).
You can post the number here for an explanation or download an app called 'Gateline Errors' to look them up yourself.

 

[Snow1964]

Was this result of printing at Salford central or do barriers at Manchester/victoria/brighton not understand two toc train routes ?

Having done journeys with 4 TOCs, it is more random than that.

Some barriers seem to be programmed to reject certain types of tickets, requiring a manual check, others just don't seem to be programmed well (not accept because no one bothered to add them, rather than deliberately set to reject).

A numerical code that appears gives reason to reject, but if you go to manual gate and say I got code xxx, most staff look blank or nod and glance at ticket rather than explain it to you,

 

[jfollows]

The information on magstripe tickets is very limited - 152 bits - and the format was invented by British Rail and London Transport so pre-dates TOCs and so on. 12 bits each for origin and destination station codes, for example. But the barriers are unlikely to be able to validate the station codes much - maybe checking origin station is this station - but not Manchester to Brighton at Victoria I wouldn’t think. So often forces a manual check, even if no specific block (such as blocking all tickets with railcard discounts) has been set.
They’re on the way out, London Transport’s successor being one reason it hasn’t happened yet, and the technology with etickets and barriers that scan them will be much more advanced.
I don’t say any of this from inside information, it’s deliberately not published but is available from talks on YouTube and so on.

For context, the previous paragraph required something like 6,800 bits, or 45 times the amount on a magstripe ticket. An Aztec code, as used on an eticket, has in excess of 15,000 bits encoded, of the order of 100 times the information in a magstripe ticket.

One thing they got right was a different header/footer identification string so the reader can work out which way to read the data without forcing passengers to insert them in a specific direction.

 

[Wallsendmag]

We've seen a lot of problems at gates recently with CCST. When we've checked the encoding they are unreadable. Wouldn't help in this case bu the quicker more TVMs start using PRT the better.

 

[saismee]

One thing they got right was a different header/footer identification string so the reader can work out which way to read the data without forcing passengers to insert them in a specific direction.

Doesn't stop people from inserting them upside down