Southern ticket checking

[SELLCPN]

Excuse me for being a new poster unsure on correct terminology and acronyms etc. for all this but wondered what people thought of this the other day...

my local station (Beckenham Junction) is managed by Southeastern and is manned seemingly all the time by Southeastern staff, although the only releasing of trains they do at the station involve trains of other network operators (minus the 0821 service to VIC). other stations along the line therefore do not have staff all the time (I don't think) so find it odd that southeastern would be in charge here. Is this a common work pattern on the railway?

Add to that then the scene which I faced on Friday evening just gone when I got off at the station to find Southern Staff checking tickets at the exits. how would this work? would they have to ask permission of Southeastern, or can they turn up where they like? and are they allowed to check tickets of people off any trains or just the ones from Southern services. I just found the whole scene to be rather odd and out of the norm for what happened (not to mention the fact i'd just got off a Thameslink Service either)

Anyway I'm just interested to hear what people thought... thanks

 

[tsr]

You will have seen a "revenue block" undertaken by Southern (now Govia Thameslink Railway [GTR] t/a Southern) Revenue Protection staff. There are various agreements in place throughout the National Rail network for companies to act on behalf of others when dealing with ticket checking/selling, issuing of penalty fares, reporting ticket irregularities and so on. This means that GTR/Southern will at this location have been authorised to check the tickets of their own passengers and Southeastern's, and take any necessary action should the need arise. The agreements will probably be explained if you ask a member of staff nicely (not saying you wouldn't). It's not particularly rare. This does apply when station management is by another Train Operating Company (TOC), eg. Southeastern vs Southern, as well as within the brands of an overall TOC (eg. the brands Thameslink and Southern are both applied to different services run by the TOC GTR).