Southeastern barcode readers

[blakey1152]

Morning everyone

Whilst browsing a popular social media site an advert showed up for Trainline which stated that all Southeastern stations had barcode readers and it had a picture of a barcode on the advert.

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@Se_Railway
Trainline now issues e-tickets as barcodes and they say there are readers for them at all Southeastern stations, where abouts is the reader at Slade Green station located?

Hi Chris. All our barriers should have barcode readers. They are located on a lower section of the barrier. If you are unsure a member of station staff should be able to direct you ^DR

There are no barriers at Slade Green though. Just Oyster readers that I have seen that's why I was was asking

I was at my local Southeastern station Slade Green on Saturday and I didn't see any barriers or scanners with the exception of the Oyster pads on the platform anywhere.

I used X to query where the scanners were at Slade Green, and if this claim by Trainline was correct. Southeastern replied with the fact that all their barriers now have the barcode scanners, and to ask a member of staff at Slade Green for their location!

So unless Southeastern have put barriers in overnight, I suspect this claim from Trainline and response from SET is incorrect!

I'm assuming if you do have a barcode e-ticket and there is no scanner that it's still valid if not scanned?

Another good reason for not using trainline and getting proper paper tickets from the good old ticket office!

 

[OscarH]

If you get given an eTicket for a station that doesn't have barcode readers then it's still entirely valid yes, they'll just do a visual inspection, or scan it with a phone at the gateline. eTickets are less likely to be enabled at stations like this, but the TOC might still enable some fares, and Trainline will decide for themselves ignoring what the TOC has specified.

 

[island]

Southeastern stations with ticket gates do indeed have Aztec code readers on (at a minimum) one gate in each direction per gateline.

There is no necessity to scan or validate Aztec code tickets like you would with Oyster pay as you go.

The underlying point of avoiding Trainline and its unnecessary booking fees is a good one.

 

[jfollows]

As others have said, there is rarely any need to scan tickets at stations, sometimes rail staff make up things when they see that tickets haven't been scanned (there are recent threads here such as https://www.railforums.co.uk/threads/please-help-—-stopped-at-farringdon-w-valid-ticket.267714/#post-6769484) but they're usually wrong. It's only a requirement to "validate" tickets such as flexi-season tickets on the day they're used, and then they have an alternative means of doing so such as an "app" to validate them.

If you have a "normal" e-ticket with an Aztec code then on arrival at a station if there are no barriers or the barriers are open and unmanned there is no need to scan the ticket. It's completely normal for me travelling at weekends that barriers at Manchester Piccadilly are open and my origin station - Wilmslow - doesn't have barriers, so I often travel without scanning my ticket in any way, and that's perfectly fine. I had no ticket checks of any sort last Saturday, on Northern, Cross-country & TfW trains or barriers.

 

[Watershed]

We'd need to see the advert to verify exactly what it says and whether or not it's true (if not, you could report it to the ASA). However, clearly there are many Southeastern-managed or served stations that don't have barriers. Slade Green is unbarriered so you won't find any e-ticket readers and there is no compulsion to scan an e-ticket for it to be valid for travel.

 

[cool110]

(I've never seen an Aztec code outside of rail transport or Wikipedia).

Airlines and Tesco clubcards also use them

 

[James H]

Last summer Southeastern did a campaign themselves to promote the wider availability of etickets on their network

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eTickets are now available to use at all Southeastern stations. Buy direct from us – no booking fees apply. Visit http://bit.ly/44YT4bR for more information.

 

[blakey1152]

Incredibly, Trainline have gone above and beyond with incorrect information on another advert about Southeastern.

I'm intrigued to know where they get their stuff from!
I've cut and pasted some of their FAQs

Buy Cheap Southeastern Train Tickets | Get Train Times 2026 | Trainline

Looking for Southeastern train tickets? Find out about popular routes, check departure times and buy cheap train tickets with Trainline.

www.thetrainline.com

Can I travel First Class with Southeastern?
Yes. There are First Class seats on most Southeastern routes except those operating between Sheerness and Sittingbourne, Strood and Paddock Wood, Grove Park and Bromley North Rochester and Dartford, Dartford and London and within the London travelcard 1-6 area (except for mainline services between London and Bromley South Orpington and St Mary Cray),

Is there WiFi on board Southeastern services?
Yes, there is WiFi on board most Southeastern trains regardless of seating class

What are Southeastern's peak hours?
Southeastern's peak hours apply to all trains arriving into London between 07:00 and 10:00 and those departing between 16:00 and 19:00 in the evening

After reading this I would even start doubting the validity of any ticket sold by them!

 

[yorkie]

Edit: sorry I misread the previous posts; I mistakenly thought there was some suggestion being made that tickets must be scanned, which of course there isn't!

Another good reason for not using trainline and getting proper paper tickets from the good old ticket office!

Where I am, most ticket offices issue tickets on "till roll" style stock, without magnetic strips and with barcodes on them, so visiting a ticket office wouldn't avoid a barcode. It would just mean you only get one piece of paper, with no backup (as opposed to an e-ticket, which can be backed up, shown on any device you have, and - optionally - printed if you want)

Over time, the traditional paper tickets without barcodes are being phased out, but the area where you are is very much behind the curve in terms of achieving this.

 

[island]

Incredibly, Trainline have gone above and beyond with incorrect information on another advert about Southeastern.

I'm intrigued to know where they get their stuff from!
I've cut and pasted some of their FAQs

I suspect a lot of it is LLMs these days.

 

[jfollows]

Large Language Model?

 

[island]

Yes – I guess I thought that was a common enough abbreviation but perhaps not

 

[jfollows]

Yes – I guess I thought that was a common enough abbreviation but perhaps not

I used to work in IT, but I’d never heard of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_language_model in case it’s helpful to others.

A large language model (LLM) is a computational model notable for its ability to achieve general-purpose language generation and other natural language processing tasks such as classification. Based on language models, LLMs acquire these abilities by learning statistical relationships from vast amounts of text during a computationally intensive self-supervised and semi-supervised training process.[1] LLMs can be used for text generation, a form of generative AI, by taking an input text and repeatedly predicting the next token or word.[2]

 

[Deafdoggie]

Another good reason for not using trainline and getting proper paper tickets from the good old ticket office!

I'm confused. Why are you happy to use a paper ticket at a station without ticket barriers but not an e-ticket?

If the advert had said "we've installed magstripe ticket readers for paper tickets at all stations" would you need it explaining to you that they clearly mean only at ticket barriers and not randomly at stations for no purpose?

 

[blakey1152]

I'm confused. Why are you happy to use a paper ticket at a station without ticket barriers but not an e-ticket?

If the advert had said "we've installed magstripe ticket readers for paper tickets at all stations" would you need it explaining to you that they clearly mean only at ticket barriers and not randomly at stations for no purpose?

I find that using anything other than a physical ticket causes great anxiety. Last time I had an e-ticket was last year when Greater Anglia did their hare fares promotion and my e-ticket just refused to scan from my phone screen and ended up having to have a rather unwanted conversation with the staff at the barrier. The first guy I spoke to basically said if it doesn't scan it can't be valid, however, common sense did prevail.
I absolutely hate having anything like that on my phone, what if the battery dies or I accidentally drop my phone and can't get it to work again or any other kind of scenario.

I won't even use Google pay because it's just too complicated for me to get to work - I really struggle with pressing the right buttons to bring up the card when I can just use my physical card and enter the PIN .

With a physical paper ticket this doesn't occur.

 

[Haywain]

I won't even use Google pay because it's just too complicated for me to get to work - I really struggle with pressing the right buttons to bring up the card when I can just use my physical card and enter the PIN .

Google Pay is simple - as long as the phone isn't in sleep mode it works. No buttons to press at all.

 

[Deafdoggie]

Google Pay is simple - as long as the phone isn't in sleep mode it works. No buttons to press at all.

By the same token, e-tickets are easy too!

I find that using anything other than a physical ticket causes great anxiety. Last time I had an e-ticket was last year when Greater Anglia did their hare fares promotion and my e-ticket just refused to scan from my phone screen and ended up having to have a rather unwanted conversation with the staff at the barrier. The first guy I spoke to basically said if it doesn't scan it can't be valid, however, common sense did prevail.
I absolutely hate having anything like that on my phone, what if the battery dies or I accidentally drop my phone and can't get it to work again or any other kind of scenario.

I won't even use Google pay because it's just too complicated for me to get to work - I really struggle with pressing the right buttons to bring up the card when I can just use my physical card and enter the PIN .

With a physical paper ticket this doesn't occur.

But lots of paper tickets don't work barriers. That's really not an argument against e-tickets it's an argument against incorrect barrier programming.

If anythng goes wrong with your phone you can log in from another device to get the ticket. If you're really worried you can print them off before you set off. But if you've got a paper ticket? what if you're wallet is robbed? What if you drop your paper ticket in a puddle? What if a ticket barrier eats your paper ticket in error? You have no choice but to buy another full price ticket. I'd really hate that. But each to their own.

 

[redreni]

Google Pay is simple - as long as the phone isn't in sleep mode it works. No buttons to press at all.

Yet it's evidently a bit too complicated for an alarming number of the people in front of me when I'm boarding buses or passing through gatelines!

 

[Trackman]

Incredibly, Trainline have gone above and beyond with incorrect information on another advert about Southeastern.

I'm intrigued to know where they get their stuff from!
I've cut and pasted some of their FAQs

Buy Cheap Southeastern Train Tickets | Get Train Times 2026 | Trainline

Looking for Southeastern train tickets? Find out about popular routes, check departure times and buy cheap train tickets with Trainline.

www.thetrainline.com

After reading this I would even start doubting the validity of any ticket sold by them!

Off-peak depends on the station, it's a right 'mare. Think they're quoting Oyster validity.

 

[yorkie]

I find that using anything other than a physical ticket causes great anxiety.

E-tickets can be printed and you can have a backup.

Last time I had an e-ticket was last year when Greater Anglia did their hare fares promotion and my e-ticket just refused to scan from my phone screen and ended up having to have a rather unwanted conversation with the staff at the barrier. The first guy I spoke to basically said if it doesn't scan it can't be valid, however, common sense did prevail.

Paper tickets are switching over to have (Aztec) barcodes; where I am, the old fashioned magstripe tickets are very rare these days. So you won't be able to avoid barcode tickets much longer.

Check out this thread:

Which train operators issue credit card sized tickets and which ones issue new style paper tickets?

Does anyone know which train operators still issue credit card sized tickets (CCSTs) with a "magstripe" on the back, and which operators have switched to issuing the new style paper tickets with a barcode? I would presume that where an operator has switched to issuing the new style paper...

www.railforums.co.uk

As for why it didn't scan, if you can send me the barcode, I can get someone to take a look at it and give you a definitive answer.

Magstripe tickets are much more likely to fail to work barriers than e-tickets.

I absolutely hate having anything like that on my phone, what if the battery dies or I accidentally drop my phone and can't get it to work again or any other kind of scenario.

Then bring a backup (a backup could be a paper ticket; a PDF on any other device you own; or it can be on a device held by another passenger, if not travelling alone).

I recently organised a trip with a group of 15 people; I gave everyone their own ticket while I had a backup of everyone's ticket. I could not do that with an old style magstripe ticket. I didn't need the backups.

With a physical paper ticket this doesn't occur.

Not quite; you said earlier a barcode couldn't be read, however new style paper tickets do have barcodes, so whatever that issue was, it can occur on paper tickets, just not the sort that are being phased out.