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.