I'm more interested in what exactly was being checked and how. The circumstances of the arrest are also interesting, but probably in other ways and for other threads. (Yes, I misnamed this one.) Thanks for the information in the posts above.

But can checking the contactless show what has been paid for? I took two bus journeys yesterday, paying for both by contactless, (neither in London, so possibly they have a different system) and all that's showing is a 10p "holding" charge.

(I'm not sure if this is better here, in Fare's Fair, or elsewhere – so mods please move if appropriate)

I'd just like to understand what happened in this case. A woman was arrested on a TfL^» (Transport for London - about) bus for alleged fare evasion (which turned out to be an incorrect allegation). What I don't understand is how this would be checked, seeing as those buses do not issue tickets, you just tap to pay (and unlike other places, don't even tap out).

I presume "ticket" is just journalese rather than referring to an actual piece of paper or electronic token.

So how on earth can it be checked? It's unlikely to even show in your bank account till the end of the day, and that doesn't distinguish different journeys.

From https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66290457 but loads of reports all over the various news outlets.

Really good photo. ^^

The amazing quantum qualities of age: 17 on the birth certificate, 15 on the bus, 18 in the off-licence!

I was unaware of the exemption for under-10s when, several years ago now, I approached the barriers and asked how to get a ticket for my then 11 year old son. Couldn't see how to get it from a machine and no ticket office (or not that was open). Staff said something along the lines of 'I don't believe he's 11, he looks 10 to me, he doesn't need a ticket.' Boy was, of course, not pleased to be 'downgraded'!

Perhaps the long-term answer is to make railcards smart. Give them RFID and link to a bank account.

The potential customers of the Jacobite would seem to be Harry Potter fans, rather than rail fans or scenery lovers.

The figures given look as if they probably relate to number of tickets. Or maybe number of transactions. Yes, those can be very different. They don't look like revenue anyway.

I'm trying to imagine what this queue might look like when it terminates not at a row of windows but at the same number of staff arranged somehow, we don't know how, on the station concourse. Perhaps we will have a number of parallel queues? Or perhaps the ticket-selling staff will be lined up outside the windows and the queue will be identical (in which case...)?

I use TVMs^▸ (Ticket Vending Machine) regularly – but either for a regular and simple journey, eg Bath or Gloucester, or when I've already looked up the possibilities online and know what ticket I want. But I was surprised to see how few people use them according to the stats in the GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) document that was linked to somewhere earlier in this thread.* Or I suppose I should say how few tickets are sold from them, as number of tickets does not necessarily equate to number of unique passengers.

*What's perhaps surprising is that this seems to be the opposite of shopping in a supermarket, where I'm one of those who prefers to queue at a human-operated till while the automatic checkouts are the more popular option generally.

It might be different for season tickets but what I've had to do in the past is upload a photo of the ticket cut in half.

And people more likely to be using these stations as the start of a longer journey, so more likely to be planned further in advance.

Thanks. Huge variation! And interesting to note that some of the stations with ticket office sales listed, don't actually have ticket offices as such.

There was a figure given either in this or the other thread that only 12% of tickets are now sold from ticket offices. Where did that come from? I can't find it now. And is there a breakdown for the remaining 88% between TVMs^▸ (Ticket Vending Machine), online, and on-train?