Jonathon Wardman

Train Tickets Explained 2016

UK train tickets were recently redesigned and are slowly being rolled out across the network. The new design, which has actually been floating around since 2014, has just reached the self-service machines in Farnham (although as of writing not the staffed ticket counter). The Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) claim the new design is supposed to make tickets “clearer and easier to understand.” With this in mind I thought it was time I updated my previous post explaining what you see on the British train tickets. [read more]

Train Tickets Explained

Read the update to this post to cover the new style (2015/2016) tickets.

Since mid 2008 I have been saving my train tickets. In the last year or so I have collected them together into a database. That meant I had to spend some time working out the data you get on a UK train ticket:

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Driving (riding) home for Christmas

It may be a day later than I had planned, but I’m on my way.  The penultimate train, in fact.  I appreciate that for normal people, saying that would be a little strange, but given it takes me 3 trains and two tubes to get back up to my parent’s house, it gives you an indication of just where abouts I am.  It is, actually, the most significant train of the trip both size and time wise (although if you add up all the other trains it’s less than half the total journey time).  But anyway. [read more]

My week off, part 1

It’s been an interesting week.  Good by most counts, despite the odd complication.  Up and down would be the best description, I think.  I’ll deal with it in a few posts to stop them being too long…

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Busy train, broken train.

This train’s not going anywhere very quickly. At least not long distances – we keep stopping but we’ve yet to find out why.  The man on the other side just told someone he was supposed to be getting into Watford for 9pm, but I suspect we’re running late now.  Of course there’s no way to tell.  I’ll be ok, it doesn’t matter if this train is a little late just so long as I don’t miss the last train back from London to Aldershot, which I’d class as ‘highly unlikely’.  Still a delay doesn’t help matters, and it would be nice if they were to tell us why exactly we do keep stopping. [read more]