Self-Service Ticket Machines

SSTMs or TVMs. Call them what you will, they break down now and again. It's a fact of life with such things.

Goes without saying that ours died again, though it was more unusual this time, in that it was in a constant reboot cycle. It'd get a certain way into the boot sequence, flash up a Command Box briefly, then reboot, ad infinitum. I duly reported this to the manufacturer via their Helpdesk, and followed it up with a call to Control to advise them of the situation.

A couple of days later, the machine was still not working, so I rang back to chase it up, and was told that they'd put the call on hold because they had been unable to connect to the machine to investigate! Bearing in mind that I had told them exactly what the problem was when I reported it, you'd think they'd have realised that they'd be unable to connect.

To cut a long story short, an Engineer came out next day, and took the PC out of the unit to take it back to their base for repair. When he returned with the supposedly fixed unit, he put it back on its shelf and started to connect it up, when he discovered that they had removed an essential component and neglected to replace it, namely the multiport Serial Card that the printers and cash handling mechanism connected to. Ho hum...

Money, money, money

Today's entry has been inspired by a number of customers, and it's a subject that I'm sure most of my fellow Ticket Office staff and Conductors (or whatever their TOC is calling them this week) hold dear to their hearts.

The subject in question is change or, more specifically, using your Ticket Office/On-Train Staff as a Bank. There aren't many things that annoy me, but someone paying for a £2 to £3 ticket with a £20 note is one of them.

Here's a clue: Ticket Offices and On-Train Staff only have a finite amount of change available, and when it's gone, it's gone. So please try to tender as close to the value of the ticket as possible, as it is greatly appreciated, given that if we run out of change, we can't sell any more tickets...Well, not for cash anyway.

This was a public service announcement on behalf of rail staff everywhere. ;-)

Faults, faults and more faults

I seem to have spent most of yesterday afternoon attempting to rectify and report faults with various bits of equipment at the station.

When I got there, both the Customer Information Screens and our Summary screen in the Ticket Office were displaying the company logo, and nothing else. One of my colleagues had reported it to the relevant people, but it still hadn't been fixed.

The ticket machine is still playing up and misfeeding, or not feeding at all, and saying the Hopper's empty when it isn't, so we're still waiting for an Engineer to come out to look at that.

More "fun" with the Self-Service Machine. The aformentioned colleague had to reboot it earlier to retrieve a stuck card, and it just kept rebooting itself without ever managing to launch the controlling software, so I've reported that to the Manufacturer, so we'll probably get an Engineer out at some point.

And finally for today, I figured I'd call up about our Permit to Travel machine, as the fluorescent tube that illuminates the display at night has been dead for ages. Unfortunately, it's not "user-serviceable", so you have to call an Engineer out just to change the tube!

If they turn up this afternoon, they're not going to get an answer, as I'm working at a different station to cover the "late" turn there instead, as it's more important. Back to normal on Wednesday though.

International Ticketing

I was updating our copy of Retail Manual Part One, which covers various Ticket Office procedures, at work yesterday, and one of the pages that was being updated was the list of stations that can do continental tickets.

The various classes of bookings are Eurostar, "Eurostar Plus", Inter-Rail, Sectional Coupons and Rail-Sea-Rail.

The one I was particularly interested in, on account of being a fairly regular user of continental rail, was sectional coupons. In days of yore, virtually every major station had an International Counter, where you could get such tickets.

Indeed, until quite recently, Cambridge and London Euston offered them. As did London Cannon Street, until the City Travel Centre and Ticket Office closed, to be replaced by a Marks and Spencer Simply Food, and a new, smaller, Ticket Office elsewhere on the lower concourse.

On the previous (February 2005) version of the relevant pages from RM1, the following stations are listed as doing Sectional Coupons:

• Chatham
• Dover Priory
• London Charing Cross
• London Liverpool Street

On the current version, the list is mostly the same, but with Doncaster instead of Dover Priory, which is a far cry from the days when most, if not all, of the 55 stations listed would have done them.

As such, for the vast majority of people, the only realistic option for booking continental tickets is to use either RailEurope or the Deutsche Bahn UK Booking Centre. Bring back BR International...

Transport for London a shining example?

Here's a little story from the latest issue of RailStaff, which dropped through my letterbox today, that may be of interest to GM Traveller.

Transport for All

Transport for London has been such a success, argues the Local Government Association, that equivalent authorities should be created in all major cities: Transport for Birmingham, Transport for Liverpool, and Transport for Manchester.

The new transit authorities would have the power to determine rail, tram and bus routes and fares. Says Professor Tony Travers of the London School of Economics, "For too long the scatter-gun approach to local transport has hurt the economic vitality of many cities in the country. Setting up TfL has been a success and it is a model that should be copied across the country."

Oops. I broked it.

The day started so well, up until the point at which I went to check how much change was left in our self service ticket machine.

Seeing it was rather short of £1 coins and 10ps (which it should be recycling, rather than dumping into the coin box), I figured I'd empty the car park machines to get sufficient change to top it up.

Being the conscientious person I am, I duly put the coins into plastic coin bags (making it easier to count), and "sold" them into the main float, exchanging them for notes.

Having worked out how much I needed (not as much as I wanted on the 10p front, but still), I duly headed out to the machine to do so, so I opened her up, and opened the flap protecting the hoppers. I added the 10p's with no problem, and then started on the £1 coins...All was going well until I managed to drop one of the plastic coin bags into the hopper.

Goes without saying that I panicked somewhat at that, and promptly hit the "Empty" button, to dump the entire contents of the hopper into the exit tray. Unfortunately, I hadn't told the machine that I'd added the cash at this point, so it dumped much more money than there should have been.

Having dumped it, I transferred the cash to a fabric coin bag, swapped the coin and note boxes with empty ones, printed off the "Shift Sheet" for the machine, and headed back into the office to count up what I had, and report the failure to the manufacturer.

So we now have an extra lot of money sitting in the safe that should be in the machine, and I've left my colleague a note for the morning to tell her what happened...The Engineer is supposed to be turning up on Monday, but we'll see...

Points Failure

It never rains, but it pours...And it was certainly pouring as I was on my way in to work this morning. My suspicions were first aroused when I got to the station and found that a train I should have missed had a six minute delay on it.

They were confirmed when we came to a halt just before the penultimate station, and the driver came over the Public Address system to inform us that there had been a points failure. Shortly after this announcement, a couple of trains went past us on the opposite tracks (the line is four tracked at this point), which is unusual for where we were, as they normally cross over to use the same bit of track that we were on.

We eventually got under way again and pulled into the penultimate station, where a train heading in the opposite direction passed us on the "fast" line, to take the branch we'd just left, suggesting the points failure was at the terminus. This was confirmed when, after departure, we proceeded to cross over onto the centre pair of tracks (the approach to the terminus being three pairs) and arrived into one of the high numbered platforms instead of one of the low numbered ones.

The points failure was eventually cleared, so I'm told, at around 2pm (I passed through at around 11:30am), only to be followed a couple of hours later by a fatality on the other route from the station.

As for work, it was a pretty quiet day, mostly because of the rain I expect, and nothing of note happened.

Work Today

Being in a Penalty Fares Area, the station I'm currently working at has a Permit to Travel machine (aka PERTIS), from which people can obtain a temporary permit, in exchange for coins, which they're then supposed to exchange for a proper ticket (paying any necessary difference) at the first opportunity.

If you aren't in posession of a "valid ticket or other authority to travel", and there's a ticket inspection, you're liable to a Penalty Fare of £20 or twice the Single Fare to the next stop, whichever is the greater, or prosecution, so it's important that PERTIS equipped stations make sure they're working and loaded with tickets.

As I needed to go to the toilet (we have to use the toilets out on the platform, same as the passengers), I duly turned the PERTIS on via the switch in the Ticket Office, and went to do my business. Upon my return, I noticed that both the "Not In Use" and "Pay at Ticket Office" lights on the PERTIS were illuminated, which they shouldn't be when it's active, and the display had "1.2" on it.

Now, this is the first time I've worked at a PERTIS-equipped station, so I had a look at the manual, which told me that a 1.2 meant that the Vandalism Alarm had been triggered, so I looked the machine over, and it didn't appear to be damaged, but try as I might, I coudln't get it to come back into service.

Then I came up with a brainwave, which was to switch the machine off then on again, which involves opening it up to get at the internal mains switch.

At this point, it's worth mentioning that we have car park machines, which are virtually identical to the PERTIS, but without the option to take them out of service from inside the ticket office (as that would be silly). As such, it took me a few attempts to find the right set of keys to get the machine open.

Upon power cycling the machine, it came back into service quite happily, and produced a receipt, which had the out of service details printed on it. Seems it had been out since around 9:30am on Saturday which, I guess, is when it was emptied. Oops.

A little while later, the local Fire Brigade turned up to do a risk assessment just in case we have a fire. They looked a little surprised when I informed them that our recommended protection distance is a full 2 kilometres (around 1.25 miles), as they normally only do 500 metres (around 1/3rd of a mile). I also checked the signal post telephones, and determined they were automatic, so they didn't need to know the phone number if they needed to get in touch with the signaller. (Obviously, I was wearing a Hi-Visibility Vest whilst doing this, and had made sure there were no trains due, as it involved going trackside, as the Signals are just off the platform ends).

Near the end of my shift, I had a couple of people come up to buy Annual Season Tickets, paid for with Company Cheques. We have a Season Ticket Database, onto which you need to enter the details of the tickets, including Method of Payment. There is one small problem with this, in that a "mere" Booking Office Clerk, like myself, doesn't have sufficient access to the database to add a new Company, so I've had to enter them with the MoP set to "Unknown" for now, and e-mail the Team Leader to ask her to add the details. Ho hum...

Well that's about it for today. I've got an earlier start on Wednesday, as my (permanent) colleague has to attend a company medical, but that suits me just fine.

Engineering Work Overrun, and my journey home

Today we had something that pretty much everyone who works as front-line staff in the rail industry dreads...An Engineering Work overrun.

In most cases, this would just cause perhaps half of the morning peak to go tits up, but this was an overrun of spectacular proportions, courtesy of a faulty tamping machine (follow the link to see a photo containing a pair of such machines).

By the time the machine was repaired, the crew were over their permitted hours, but as the job wasn't finished, they weren't in a position to hand the line back, so Single Line Working was temporarily implemented through the affected area, thereby reducing capacity by around 50%, meaning some trains had to be terminated short of their destinations.

The new crew eventually turned up, and work resumed at around 9am. Now, the problem with tamping is that you have to do it extremely slowly...And they had just over 14 miles (around 22.5 km) to do altogether.

Suffice to say, the line was eventually handed back at 17:17, but there had been delays, short workings, and cancellations all day as a result.

And then, on my way home, I was going great guns until the Underground train I was on waited for what seemed like ages at one station, stopped for a minute or so between there and the next one, trundled along thence to the station after that, stopping in the tunnel yet again, and again between the next two stations, and between the next two, so I jumped out when we eventually stopped at the next station.

Upon exiting the station, I discovered that I had just missed a bus and the next one wasn't due for another 12 minutes. When it didn't show up, I jumped back onto the Underground to travel on another couple of stops, with the intention of catching a bus from there, which drops me around 30 seconds from my front door. Once again, the train stopped in the short tunnel section just before my destination station for a minute or two, jeopardising my chances of getting the bus, but I made it to the stop just in time.

Welcome!

Welcome to this, the blog of a temp working in the UK rail industry. Things you can expect to see here will include encounters with the great British public, dealings with staff, etc. In short, the usual things you get in front-line staff blogs ;-)

One thing you won't see, however, is the real names of any people or companies involved, as I'd quite like to keep my job.

And so, without further ado, here's my first story, based on a transaction some time last week:

Customer: (Shows a Transport for London Oyster card, allowing one to "PrePay" for Underground, Bus and certain rail journeys, or also containing a weekly or longer Travelcard) I'd like a ticket to Central London and a return from London, because someone's coming back with me.
Me: *duly issues a Single to the first station within the zones covered by said Oyster, and a single from London back to our station*
Customer: *pays and heads to the platform*

Bear in mind that I have just sold what I think are the most appropriate tickets based on what the customer has told me.

A few moments later, the customer returns and claims I've sold her the wrong tickets(!) as it transpires that the person travelling back to the station is, in fact, heading into London with her now, and returning later.

So at this point, I cancel the single from London, and issue a return to London instead, in exchange for the difference in fares. The pair head back to the platform, only to return for a third time:

Customer: Will this get us on the Underground?
Me: No, only to London and back.
Customer: But why not? I asked for a ticket to Central London.
Me: (thinks) Which is precisely what you got you daft cow. (says) Okay...In that case, you actually need a Travelcard. Give me the tickets back, and I'll sort them out.
Customer: *hands the tickets over*
Me: *cancels the whole lot, issues a Travelcard for her travelling companion, single to London for her* Okay...That'll cover you for that. And as you're returning to a different place, you're better off using your Oyster for your journey, as it'll be cheaper.
Customer: *leaves, and boards the train*

That's just another typical example of customer stupidity that occurs almost every day. And you think you've seen it all, but you then find a bigger idiot.

At the station I'm currently working at, the Passenger Information Screen on one platform hadn't been working since the start of January, and the other died in mid-February following a power cut. They finally replaced both monitors (at a vastly over-inflated cost!), along with fitting a new Time Lapse VCR for one of the CCTV cameras, and new tapes in all three of the VCRs, on Thursday, so I duly sent an e-mail out to our Team Leader, Station Manager and Control informing them of this, only to get an e-mail back from the Station Manager suggesting my e-mail had a "sarcastic tone" and I should "be more professional" in future.