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Mark A
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« on: July 23, 2024, 10:39:39 » |
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Fairly minor adventures.
Hitting Croydon's trams at Elmers End... now I know that there are two sorts of Oyster▸ touch-in points there, I'll have a better chance of getting it right, but for the time being TfL» is about £6 up on the transaction (and I'm £6 down).
That's with them to sort, but be aware that if you phone them it can be a £0.25 per minute call and alternative contact methods are only discoverable after a bit of a hunt.
The lack-of-touch-in then led to a bit of a discussion with the only revenue protection officer I've ever encountered on the tram, and who understandably took a dim view that I'd not touched in on the tram.
I elected not to pay the immediate... was it £60 fine... on the spot and said I'd like to contest it, at which point he went away, came back, we had a discussion about where I lived ("Ah, not London") and he went away again, came back again, scanned the Oyster card, would have seen precisely what had happened, and asked me to pop off the tram at the next stop and touch in again. (The tram's weird, like the buses, passengers touch in but not out.) He wasn't, though, able to sort the unreconciled touch in on the National Rail system.
The weekend's buses: all good, but TfL have a *lot* of freeloading fare evasion going on and could do with far more by way of ticket sweeps there.
The weekend's trains: also, all good. The Elizabeth line is... popular. Can't see how Old Oak Common as a terminus for that little short hop from Birmingham isn't going to slay it - perhaps the answer is that HS2▸ in its present form will have very low passenger numbers. This isn't an answer of course...
Sunday evening, a Southern service in to Victoria picked up what we found was 'One of our most persistent prolific beggars' whose M.O. was to be a little edgy & obnoxious in the hope that someone would give him money to make him go away.
Unfortunately he was also being more than a little creepy towards women travelling on their own and I'll put in a report to BTP▸ about this.
We thought he'd be off the train before the terminus, but no, he was off at Victoria Station and to our surprise, after a bit of bluster from him the barrier staff let him through, when he started to pester his way round the station. My feisty travelling companion raised this with the barrier staff, and after a minute or three, two security guys appeared and did... not much.
All this accompanied by regular 'See it say it sorted' announcements.
The guy had last been seen heading for Wetherspoons. In I went and he was working through their seated customers at the opposite end to the bar. Pointed this out to one of the bar staff who did a 'Not again' eyeroll and asked him to leave.
We made our way towards our connecting train...
... and halfway to the barrier, found him hanging on to a seated tourist's luggage attempting to extract cash from the bloke.
Lo and behold, a solitary member of station security staff appeared. We pointed the guy out to him, he radioed for backup and... the other two security guys appeared again and ... moved the beggar, who was by not being a bit of a face-hugger, off the tourist and sent him... 50 yards across the concourse.
We needed to head for the connection at this point, so, left the scene with a final 'See it say it sorted' ringing in our ears.
Mark
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