An interesting chat regarding tickets
 

On a train last week I had a chat with the man sitting next to me, who turned out to be a Northern Rail conductor. On the same day some non-Northern Rail staff were at Knutsford station checking people's tickets (the first time I've seen any there since Regional Railways were running the service)

He said that if someone purchased a return ticket from Knutsford to Manchester from the ticket office costing £5, then the full £5 spent at the ticket office would go to Northern Rail. However, if a £5 ticket to Manchester was purchased from the third party ticket checking staff then only £2.50 would go to Northern Rail. If the same ticket was purchased from the conductor on the train then about £4.50 would go to Northern Rail, with the conductor earning some commision. Likewise if a Manchester to Knutsford ticket was purchased from the Virgin Trains ticket office at Manchester Piccadilly then Virgin Trains would earn a similar rate of commision.

Some interesting info there.
I half expected that the "third party ticket checkers" would take a large chunk of the fares but the commission paid to Northern's conductors surprised me. I assume that it's Northern's way of getting the conductors to check/issue more tickets but I wonder if the commission is regarded as a nice bonus or an absolute necessity because the basic wage is so poor?

Northern's commision explains something that happened a few months ago. I caught the 0857 Knutsford to Greenbank service which was running about 30 minutes late (that train terminates at Greenbank.) When the train arrived at Greenbank (an unstaffed station) a man on the platform asked the conductor if the train was terminating or going to Chester. When the conductor told him the train was terminating and the next train to Chester was in 40 minutes, the man asked is there anywhere to buy a ticket, the conductor then offered to sell the man a ticket even though the train was already late for it's next service.