Thank you for your reply and the welcome. The lady at the station said I would receive a letter does that mean it will be a fine and if so how much? Six or seven months seems like a really long time
A lot will depend on what actually happened, and how you respond.
I assume you were stopped because you didn't have a valid ticket. That will mean that the railway will want to (a) get the train fare that you should have paid and (b) be certain that you won't fail to pay your train fare again.
In terms of making sure that you don't get it wrong again, there are broadly three or four things that the railway can do
- decide that pulling you over and talking to you was enough and nothing more need to happen. This is unlikely but has been known to happen
- on some routes, issue you a penalty fare. In practice this has to be done at the time, and since it doesn't seem to have been done here, the railway can't go back and do it now.
- agree with you that you should pay the fare and an 'administration fee' of maybe £100 to £200 on top of the fare - this is known as an 'out of court settlement'.
- take you to court and charge you with fare dodging (n.b. the actual charge is worded rather more formally than that). If convicted, then you would have to pay a fine, plus court and prosecution costs, plus compensation to the railway. In very broad terms this is likely to be more than an out of court settlement.
So you can see that the railway's approach is to make it more expensive for you to fare dodge than it is to pay the right fare every time you travel.
As the lady at the station said, the next thing that happens will be that the railway writes to you. As I've said, this could take up to about six months but is likely to be quicker. The letter will probably be headed something like 'notice of intention to prosecute', but if you read it closely you will see that the railway haven't actually decided to prosecute you at that point - they will be asking for your side of the story.
At that point, I'd suggest that you come back to us and ask us for advice. Essentially, this will be your best chance to persuade the railway that you have learnt your lesson and won't fare dodge again. If you are able to convince them of this, then they may let you settle through an out of court settlement. If they're not convinced (or if you don't get back to them) then they will take you to court which will probably be even more expensive.
