Kite159
Veteran Member
New ticket design is producing at the TVMs at Grateley & Basingstoke so has SWT gone over to the new design for all TVMs?
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New Ticket Design Launched
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Kingsbury Jn.
Member
Likewise today, at Tamworth , when I collected tickets purchased online .
Harlesden
Member
Have just purchased an Advance first class single London-Sheffield and there is no separate reservation coupon. All information is squeezed onto the ticket itself making it very hard to read. Is this a trial or is it permanent?
Permanent. The legibility is variable depending on the quality of the printer.
Printing text over other text is still happening and it made it difficult for me to recognise which tickets I had were Two Together and which were Senior Railcards, when giving them out.
One member of staff said it didn't matter as the discounts were the same and all anyone cares about is the D at the top. I must remember to use that line with an RPI one day!!
One member of staff said it didn't matter as the discounts were the same and all anyone cares about is the D at the top. I must remember to use that line with an RPI one day!!
bb21
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There is a solution for that problem implemented by some TVMs,
by omitting the second line of text completely.
by omitting the second line of text completely.
LondonStatto
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This thread was most interesting, glad I found it. I got a new style ticket for my Christmas trip to Canterbury - sadly my ticket wasn't checked at all in either direction so I couldn't ask the guard what he thought of it.
Edit: I hadn't heard anything about the new style of ticket so had to go to the ticket office to ask about it. It just doesn't look like a train ticket.
My thoughts:
There's too much information so the station names, even if they're in the same size font as the old style, are less readable.
Worse, the old OUT/RTN bold text has been reduced in size and put on the orange bar at the top. This is terrible for me as I invariably buy return tickets for at least two people, and it makes it much slower to see which are the right tickets for which bit of the journey.
Also, the "v" in valid has become separated from its "alid" (see attachment).
I do like having the restrictions URL listed.
Edit: I hadn't heard anything about the new style of ticket so had to go to the ticket office to ask about it. It just doesn't look like a train ticket.
My thoughts:
There's too much information so the station names, even if they're in the same size font as the old style, are less readable.
Worse, the old OUT/RTN bold text has been reduced in size and put on the orange bar at the top. This is terrible for me as I invariably buy return tickets for at least two people, and it makes it much slower to see which are the right tickets for which bit of the journey.
Also, the "v" in valid has become separated from its "alid" (see attachment).
I do like having the restrictions URL listed.
Attachments
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trainophile
Established Member
That looks like something a child might do with a John Bull printing set! 
Each time I have a new style ticket issued from the Woking ticket machines they don't work in the barriers for the tube and each time the barrier staff have taken one look at them and said "Ahh new ticket formats hardly ever work come on thru!".
That's interesting as I'm surprised what's printed on the front impacts what is coded on the back.
That's an interesting routeing on that ticket. I thought it used to be 'Victoria Line North' (and this is still what Avantix Traveller says)/ I seem to remember a thread a couple of years back where we were discussing the validity of this routeing via Kings Cross.
Yes, I think I was part of that discussion and it was suggested that you might be able to travel via King's Cross.
Clearly it's quicker to go via FPK so I've never needed to do it, the one exception being when the tube was shut due to an incident and I went to King's Cross and was let out without fuss, and allowed travel on the tube to Liverpool Street and back in. I think me pretty much saying I was going that way due to Victoria Line problems with total confidence helped, as nobody ever stopped to check or question me!
On the TVM itself it's shown as Victoria Line North (it says that even if you book the other way, when you'd expect it to say South?).
Clearly it's quicker to go via FPK so I've never needed to do it, the one exception being when the tube was shut due to an incident and I went to King's Cross and was let out without fuss, and allowed travel on the tube to Liverpool Street and back in. I think me pretty much saying I was going that way due to Victoria Line problems with total confidence helped, as nobody ever stopped to check or question me!
On the TVM itself it's shown as Victoria Line North (it says that even if you book the other way, when you'd expect it to say South?).
It could be a more general balls-up by S&B when they updated SWT's machines...
SWT's S&B machines are simply not encoding Advance tickets at all since they changed to the new format. You'll get the same error code if you put the ticket in upside down. Last week the machines at Haslemere were not encoding any tickets at all, and weren't printing them correctly in the new style, but something more akin to a season ticket or Travelcard from a machine printing the new style. The software update also caused some machines to go out of action for around a week leading up to Christmas, with S&B engineers completely baffled as to what the problem was.
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swt_passenger
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Have the diamond and circle to indicate discounts been binned now, I see D on all mine for Railcard? Is it C for child?
It does seem odd that they don't put the railcard info to the right of, and on the same line as the ticket type, there must always be room as they only really need the three letters, such as SNR or NSE etc, and it would give them another spare line or two?
It does seem odd that they don't put the railcard info to the right of, and on the same line as the ticket type, there must always be room as they only really need the three letters, such as SNR or NSE etc, and it would give them another spare line or two?
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I'm seeing a mix of both. The problem with the 'D' for discount is that it also appears on Advance tickets where it used to show the percentage discount, so you have to check to see what discount is applied by looking at the text. In some cases this is also badly overprinted. You end up asking for railcards where none are required and vice versa.
Just another step in making this awful design even worse!
CatfordCat
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I had a similar hmm moment this week - don't often get a one-off return, but only working 2 days this week and am between season tickets.
first thought was i'd got a receipt and not a ticket.
does seem unhelpful - both for passengers and train / station staff who might want to look at them - to make the text smaller...
first thought was i'd got a receipt and not a ticket.
does seem unhelpful - both for passengers and train / station staff who might want to look at them - to make the text smaller...
Silver Cobra
Member
It's interesting to see how there are variances with the new ticket design, depending on where they are issued from. Comparing the tickets posted on the previous page to one I received recently in the post from VTEC:
The most interesting difference is the inclusion of something resembling a QR code, but not quite the right layout for one. Something specific to VTEC perhaps?
The most interesting difference is the inclusion of something resembling a QR code, but not quite the right layout for one. Something specific to VTEC perhaps?
That's an Aztec code. VTEC and a few other TOCs print them, guards can scan it with their hand-held scanner.
One of the main points of the new design is to make tickets more comprehensible, using cryptic three letter codes with no explanation would be a step backwards.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
True, but equally every Railcard holder knows what their Railcard code is, it's not as if they don't see it on every ticket!
I think it could be made clear without the need to make it really wordy.
fairysdad
Member
It's not new to the new ticket design, I've seen it on an old-style ticket issued at King's Cross and not for a VTEC route (it was Exeter to Umberleigh! The lady behind the counter didn't bat an eyelid...), yet not seen it on a new-style one until your posted image. (I've only seen one new-style ticket in the flesh from a SWT TVM.)
Then, having seen it, I think the new design is an unmitigated failure.
It seems neither easy for the passenger not railway staff to quickly determine ticket validity. Or indeed even that you have the right ticket at all.
The text is too small, it's badly placed, and it makes the train ticket look like a receipt.
I'm sure there are plenty of people out there that could design a very easy to understand ticket that contains more information. They don't appear to me to have been given the job to do so.
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So the change from GOLDC to D makes things more comprehensible does it?!
I think the single letter code with no explanation is more cryptic. The validity of the ticket is affected by the type of railcard and yet that's not indicated on the ticket. That is not progress, that's a step backwards. I presume this decision was taken by a committee of idiots who don't buy tickets?
andrewkeith5
Member
I presume you haven't seen the part of the ticket where the railcard is referenced using its full name? The D exists to indicate that the ticket has been discounted in some way...
swt_passenger
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The first version of my post, until I edited it, I suggested the whole wording be extended to the right, using the long 'railcard' name - until I remembered the space was there on the right for Aztec codes.
Perhaps they could use a short version such as 'Senior Card' or 'Network Card' (for examples) and still get the whole message across. Also would '&' be ok rather than 'with'?
So using my example photo below,
Adult Standard Class
with Senior Railcard
could become
Adult Standard Class & Senior Card
At least SWT seem to have avoided overwriting and they have missed the orange borders...
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