FasTIS Update

Well we're now almost fully FasTIS'ed up with, I believe, but a single APTIS left in operation.

This causes a problem, as the maintenance contract for the APTIS machines expires shortly, at which point the cost of the new contract will be shared between any TOCs still using APTIS.

The main reason for a station to still have an APTIS, at present, is because none of the next generation Ticket Issuing Systems can handle Oyster.

Having said that, Cubic have got a temporary accreditation for a system called SPORT, which will be capable of processing Oyster, until such time as FasTIS+Oyster is available.

Many of the initial problems we experienced with FasTIS have now been fixed, but we came across a new one a couple of days ago:

Scenario: Customer has a First Class BritRail Pass, and wishes to use a "Night Riviera" Sleeper down to Penzance.

As such, the customer needs to pay the £40 Sleeper Supplement, and we need to do a reservation.

Nice and easy in the non-GUI version of Tribute (as it combines the supplement and reservation into a single step), and with good old CRS, but not so easy on FasTIS.

What we ended up having to do was bring the journey details up in RJIS, add the Sleeper supplement to the Any Permitted First Open Single, make the reservation in RJIS, then set up the same thing in FasTIS, add the supplement, then transfer the reservation details by use of the "Manual Reservation" option, but issue just the reservation and supplement, not the ticket.

In other news, it is now possible to purchase Family, Senior and Young Persons Railcards online (except for Mature students), and I saw my first such Y-P yesterday.

The cards themselves are printed onto "credit card" style plastic cards (albeit without the magstripe), with the Young Persons incorporating a digitally printed photo of the holder (so no need for a separate photocard).

The rear of the card contains a signature strip, barcode (not sure what that's for yet) and return address.