[hstudent]

I’ve noticed that a lot of conductors, particularly those on Northern’s services don’t seem to be checking tickets properly. There are at least two conductors who don’t actually bother checking tickets, but do walk up and down the train after each station asking if anyone requires a ticket. While some other conductors quickly glance at the ticket and probably wouldn’t notice if someone showed them a ticket dated for the 16th, when the date was the 18th, for example. It makes it seem that when a conductor properly checks your ticket, that there’s something wrong.

The problem is probably at times on busy trains the conductor doesn’t have time to thoroughly check tickets and issue them to other people without letting people get away with not showing a ticket.

One conductor seems to have a different approach which I think works quite well. He alternates between starting at the back of the train and the front of the train. This seems to work as I’ve noticed that quite often there are people who board at one station, then get off at the next, sit at the opposite end of the train from where the conductor opens the doors, probably in the hope that they can travel for free.

Also, with Northern they never stamp any tickets, with the exception of sometimes scribbling the date on the return part of a saver or open return. This means that it’s easy for the return part of a day return to be used more than once. However, I’m unaware of that happening.