PENALTY FARES - A BEGINNERS GUIDE FOR ONLY FOOLS & COMMUTERS 

Someone tried this on with me not so long ago. They got a very abrupt “sod off”! I was then allowed to pay the correct fare. It’s not my fault the machines don’t work!

I witnessed several passengers being fined by inspectors after boarding a train at Winsford some years ago. It was Grand National weekend and completely packed. Convenient? Bear in mind that Winsford typically has an hourly service, 1 booking office window and probably only 1 machine. Everybody pleaded the same case; stating there was a huge queue and would miss their train, but would happily pay now. Instead they were stung and left feeling very hard done by. Not good PR at all! Penalty fares should exist for deliberate fare dodgers, not those who make honest mistakes or have no other means to buy before boarding.

Penalty fares should in my book be scrapped. They put potential passengers off using the railway if they think there’s a chance they might incur a fine for no genuine reason. If a station has a booking office you buy your ticket there then get on the train. If it’s an unmanned station with no ticket machine (or if its broken) you buy your ticket on the train simple. That system has worked for years so why interfere with it?

When I travel by train I ALWAYS use the train app on my phone to see how much the tickets are and then I see if I can afford the ticket and if I got enough money for the ticket I ALWAYS buy my ticket and I always ask for a receipt so I got prove that I brought that ticket before I travel

LOL you are using the northern 321 and 322 voice :D

I've been fined £107 - for getting on the wrong train. I appealed but was fined anyway. Won't be using a train again.

"You could be breaking the criminal law"... Erm technically it is fare evasion which is generally a civil matter and only becomes criminal if (a) you dont pay the original fine and then reported to court (b) your reported directly to court for the offence of fare evasion and you dont pay that fine then its criminal. As a criminal offence fare evasion isn't an arrest able offence as such, you could be arrested for trespassing on the railway but unless you've actually been on the line side or tracks itself it in all probability be dropped due to a lack of evidence. So stating something is against the law when it's actually a bylaw and the fact it's generally considered a civil offence means the information is incorrect, misleading and seriously misguided by the rail delivery group who basically are in charge of national rail and some other boring stuff like general organisation and moderation of the railway where a lot of this tosh comes from.. the TOCS don't make this it's basically all comes from one source.

Thank god I buy a iLink All Zones and Northwest day card when I need to go to Belfast from Derry

It's 2021, it should be entirely possible to purchase a ticket within 7 minutes. Went to work today and as it's a Saturday there was a cheap ticket available, but only for physical tickets. The Northern ticket machine we used was the most sluggish ridiculous contraption I've ever encountered. it took literal minutes to purchase tickets for one simple journey, as i remarked to my coworker at the time was that 25 years ago ticket machines had one button per destination and were as fast as shit.

so in devon we are civilised and pay any way we can and accepted just because big citys cant be arsed to but conductors on their train

Not convinced SOME of these lot are innocent. I pay, should they

You know when you said you had payed all your fines, did you have to go to court?

GTR V

hahahahahahahahahahaha