Queuebusters at railway stations

[Edvid]

Earlier today I was queuing up at the Luton Airport Parkway ticket office with two relatives to buy Groupsave tickets to East Croydon, seeing as the self-service machines do not sell Groupsave tickets. The queue was not exceptionally long but within a minute of joining the queue a Revenue Protection Inspector approached us and offered to sell tickets to us there and then; we took up the offer and were it not for him we may have missed our train (granted the next one was only another 15 minutes away).

Who else has personally benefitted from such service?

 

[thelem]

There are routinely staff with mobile ticket machines in the ticket hall at Brighton. I don't know why they don't just install more ticket machines though, that would surely be cheaper than employing these extra staff?

 

[jopsuk]

There's often a couple of staff with machines selling at Cambridge-especially when one of the (four) machines fails, and they've got all the windows at the office open already.


Sunday afternoon/Monday morning the only ticket facilities available were two staff with portables- a power failure had knocked out the machines and desks- along with the barriers and shops. Cue a long queue of London-Cambridge cylists- all the way out of the door, heading for the bus stops.

 

[me123]

Glasgow Central will not sell tickets at platforms (in fact there are no machines on the "public" side of the barriers. Really frustrating when you want to go home at rush hour and can be in a 10 minute queue Now, I know most travellers have a return or a season ticket at that time and that putting machines at the gates would just cause additional queues there, but the queues are pretty bad at that time.

 

[Mintona]

Always a man for the morning peak at Wilmslow

 

[caughtonatrain]

There are routinely staff with mobile ticket machines in the ticket hall at Brighton. I don't know why they don't just install more ticket machines though, that would surely be cheaper than employing these extra staff?

Surely the original post says it all? Machines don't have all the tickets you might need. Plus you can't really ask questions of them. They're OK but no substitute for people.

 

[1D53]

always a couple at Leeds at peak times, selling tickets to those unable to buy on board before they reach the barrier.

 

[Z12XE]

Ipswich often have some.

They also have guards on "Platform Duties" at Colchester doing such thingsfor a hour or so if they are diagrammed to have a PNB then be back working before their next train is due

 

[Ben]

They also have guards on "Platform Duties" at Colchester doing such thingsfor a hour or so if they are diagrammed to have a PNB then be back working before their next train is due

You mean NXEA are making Staff work through breaks?

Serious issue that needs raising with the unions If you ask me.

 

[Z12XE]

You mean NXEA are making Staff work through breaks?

No.

Guard works train in.
PNB
After PNB an hour or so until Guards next train to work so does platform duties.
Guard works next train

 

[Ben]

No.

Guard works train in.
PNB
After PNB an hour or so until Guards next train to work so does platform duties.
Guard works next train

Ah right sorry.

 

[Tom C]

Earlier today I was queuing up at the Luton Airport Parkway ticket office with two relatives to buy Groupsave tickets to East Croydon, seeing as the self-service machines do not sell Groupsave tickets. The queue was not exceptionally long but within a minute of joining the queue a Revenue Protection Inspector approached us and offered to sell tickets to us there and then; we took up the offer and were it not for him we may have missed our train (granted the next one was only another 15 minutes away).

Who else has personally benefitted from such service?

Under Thameslink it was certainly something we did routinely and at certain depots it is still the case. Infact at one depot it is still part of the inspectors diagram to cover a booking office during the morning peak before going out on trains.

 

[P156KWJ]

we usually have them at Station street, old market square, royal centre and forest on NET at peak on the platforms, as even when there's 2 conductors they can't walk down the tram

 

[rail-britain]

Glasgow Central will not sell tickets at platforms (in fact there are no machines on the "public" side of the barriers. Really frustrating when you want to go home at rush hour and can be in a 10 minute queue Now, I know most travellers have a return or a season ticket at that time and that putting machines at the gates would just cause additional queues there, but the queues are pretty bad at that time.

There are three machines on the platform concourse
However I do agree if you are on the platform side, then you are gubbed really
Sadly, due to the station design barrier checks can only be done at platform ends and equipping every platform with a machine would be expensive and may also pose a H&S concern as it would restrict the platform width and quite severely in some cases

 

[me123]

Yes, I meant handheld machines when I said that. The four ticket machines (plus another 3 Virgin Trains machines but I don't know if they sell walk up tickets?) do tend to be very busy. Once I arrived with 15 minute to go for a train; a barely made the one after that because of queueing at the "fast"ticket machines :roll:

Central, however, was never really designed for barrier checks. Putting them in placealong the station would never work, unless you just did barriers for 12 and 13. I can't see them working elsewhere as there's simply no room.

 

[37412]

Wish there was someone selling tickets to people in the queue yesterday at Peterbourgh, missed the 1844 to Brum by about 5 minutes due to the length of the queue and the next one was an hour and 10 later, still scratched the Wethies.