I was on a train from Nottingham to St Pancras yesterday – it happens from time to time; I frequently travel by train, and always pay for the journey. That’s not entirely true, actually, only last Wednesday, my journey to work was free because there was no way of getting a ticket – I paid for the day as part of the pass in the evening, though, so it made up for it.

However.

There was a lad on our train yesterday travelling to Dorking, doing the opposite, and he got found out in such a way that I haven’t seen before but was thoroughly satisfying to see.

First, he was trying to get by on a ticket that required a pass. When asked for the pass and not being able to produce it despite claiming to have it, the ticket chap, fairly sarcastically “Oh, its not that you don’t have it, its that you haven’t looked for it yet”.
Civilian 0-1 Conductor.

He then, having not being able to find it, asked whether the conductor could re-print him one to match the non-photo part of the card he’d found after 10 minutes. No.

He was then charged £78 for his ticket to St Pancras, and complained, when he didn’t get student discount that there was nobody in the ticket office where he got on to buy his ticket from. Brilliantly, the conductor then phoned said ticket office and asked when they arrived. They were open long before our train left. Civilian 0-2
Conductor

Spluttering a bit afterwards, he then tried to claim that he’d arrived in such a rush that he hadn’t seen the ticket office open and could he still have the discount to which, to his credit, the conductor pointed out that he’d only charged him to St Pancras, not all the way to Dorking as he could get his student discount for that leg before boarding the train. Civilian 0-3 Conductor

Game, Set and Match.

The moral of the story is this. Pay for your train tickets and carry your passes at all times if you’re using them. If not, be prepared to stump up.