W&C Fares in BR Days

[Deleted]

Often when I'm trying to leave the Waterloo & City at Bank, I see people getting stopped at the gateline because they are travelling with a ticket issued to London Terminals, rather than to Z1 or a travelcard.

This got me to wondering; when the W&C was owned by British Rail up the early nineties, was Bank treated as a London Terminal for this purpose, or was a ticket with Underground validity still required?
Or was there no concept of London Terminals back then?

I think there'd be some definite merit in having a big sign somewhere near the W&C entrance at Waterloo saying 'Tickets to London Terminals not valid.'

Regards
Daniel

[mrfs42]

AFAIAA, tickets to 1072 (if anyone else remembers the number, from my days as an agency booking clerk) were not valid to Bank and required a + endorsement.

[grahamhewett]

mrfs42 - Quite right - why would we (in BR) have wanted to give away a large source of cash? [At least, that's what we thought until the time came to close it for modernisation and we observed the route 800 bus replacement. In NSE HQ, we duly noted that surface to surface journey times were no different as between the 800 and the Drain and that 20 buses were considerably cheaper than 20 tube cars to run and maintain, particularly if we could have gone for a toll-plaza type coin in bin payment method. However, as committed railwaymen, we put the naughty thought away...]

GH

[Deleted]

Thanks, guess that makes sense, gotta squeeze as much money out of the City commuters as possible.

I wonder how many of the people trying to get through on London Terminals tickets know they aren't valid and are chancing it, and how many were issued the wrong ticket because they didn't know they were invalid.

[stevo]

ticket clerks whether NR or LUL are intelligent trained people who would know Bank ain't a London terminal. Maybe most of these people ask for a ticket to Waterloo, hoping for a free ride on the WC

[Deleted]

By 'Issued the wrong ticket', I meant that they had asked for a ticket to London Terminals or obtained it from a machine believing it to be valid to Bank, rather than asking for a ticket to Bank and being issued the wrong one.

Most of the ticket clerks and guards around here sensibly ask 'Are you just going to Waterloo, or do you need Underground as well?' but given that many stations in SWT land are unstaffed for a lot of the day, then a Ticket Vending Machine is often the only way to purchase a ticket.

[Deleted]

I have a faint recollection that until about the mid 70s (someone may come along with the accurate answer) South East division tickets were issued to specific London stations, after which they were issued to London (SR) which allowed travel to any station to Cannon Street, Charing Cross or Holborn Viaduct (and of course intermediate stations at Waterloo E, London Bridge, Blackfriars) - I'm not sure whether you were allowed to change at Peckham Rye and go on to Victoria.

I can therefore assume that Bank would have required a different ticket to Waterloo. Whether it might have got included within 'London SR' I'm not sure, likewise I'm not sure whether (at that time) a ticket valid on the SW division into Waterloo would have been issued to 'London SR' allowing onward travel to (say) Cannon Street via Waterloo East and London Bridge.

(the Charing Cross - Cannon Street shuttle that made this a relatively easy journey ended, I think, before 'London SR' tickets started being issued.)

[norbitonflyer]

Maybe they thought this was real

(How did I miss this at the time?)

[norbitonflyer]

Jan 12, 2013 0:50:57 GMT @littleredtrain said:

Often when I'm trying to leave the Waterloo & City at Bank, I see people getting stopped at the gateline because they are travelling with a ticket issued to London Terminals, rather than to Z1 or a travelcard.

I suspect that much of the problem is the confusing gateline arrangments at Waterloo. Waterloo (W&C) is one of the few places where it is possible to get onto the Underground without going through a barrier, and it is all too easy to forget, or not realise, that you have passed a reader, especially when it is busy. I have encountered a similar problem in the other direction, if changing from the Drain to SWT. You leave the Drain, and you get to a barrier so you swipe your Oyster to get "out" and go to join your train. But in fact that barrier is to let you on to SWT's platforms, and you missed the barrierless exit from the Drain. If you are using a paper ticket on the main line, you end up with two unresolved Oyster journeys, as when you thought you were tapping out you were tapping in again.

[d7666]

Jan 13, 2013 1:01:08 GMT @puddytat said:

I have a faint recollection that until about the mid 70s (someone may come along with the accurate answer) South East division tickets were issued to specific London stations, after which they were issued to London (SR) which allowed travel to any station to Cannon Street, Charing Cross or Holborn Viaduct (and of course intermediate stations at Waterloo E, London Bridge, Blackfriars) - I'm not sure whether you were allowed to change at Peckham Rye and go on to Victoria.

I vaguely remember something like this too, but from the SWD - from Salisbury or Bournemouth/Christchurch ISTR used to be Waterloo only, but then became London SR, c.1973???, so you could go on via Waterloo East to Charing Cross, even to Cannon Street via Waterloo East and London Bridge. I know you could do those as I did them, I never did Victoria like that though but possibly only for the reason that Exeter/Salisbury line trains never called at Clapham Junction in those days, and from Bournemouth I used fast '91's that equally did not call CJ; '92's of course did call CJ if I came Up from Christchurch, and you'd have to be verging on the insane to do Bomo-CJ on a '93'. But I too am not sure if changing en route before Waterloo was allowed for such as Wimbledon for Holborn Viaduct as well as CJ for Victoria. At the back of my mind I have a feeling London SR in this case on the SWD in practice meant "via Waterloo" and not an alternative terminii that by passed it.

Anyway, back to subject, as far as I remember, Bank was always a separate entity, always a higher fare, and not London SR.

Further, I don't think you could get Cheap Day Returns from stations in the sticks to Bank, you could only get standard Singles or Returns, or obviously Seasons. Which, if you think about it, falls in line with maximising revenue, and the market for CDR to bank would probably have been low.

--
Nick