The early train

The second 5.20am train of the week and I'm beginning to wonder what I've done to deserve this. With my innate desire never to be late for anything, I always book a taxi for 4.45, it always turns up five minutes early and so I arrive at Piccadilly a full 30 minutes before the train is scheduled to depart.

As I stand on the platform, staring at the door button for coach B waiting for it to be activated and let me on to the train, I ponder the benefit of the potential extra twenty minutes I could have stayed in bed, and try to calculate how much of my life I've wasted standing on platforms staring at door buttons or timetable displays.

Virgin have "passenger control" down to a fine art. At Euston, we're held on the concourse until about 8 minutes before the train leaves, the sign displaying only "Being Prepared" instead of a platform number. Every other service displays a platform number except the train to Manchester. I asked the hapless Virgin staffer about this once and was politely told it was because Euston didn't guarantee a platform to the arriving Manchester trains so they didn't know in advance where it would be.

This is blatant gobshite. The Manchester-London service runs every half hour and there is always one in when the next one arrives, so each train must arrive anything up to an hour before it has to be ready to depart. Easily long enough to clean and prepare it for the return journey and allow passengers to take their seats at their leisure, rather than via the mad scramble that ensues when the platform is *finally* revealed 8 minutes before departure.

At Piccadilly the crowd passenger control is much simpler. They announce the platform but keep the train locked until 5 minutes before it leaves. Small queues build up outside every door and, as I'm always half-an-hour early, I'm always at the front of the one outside the forward door to coach B. Staring at the button.

When we finally set off the train manager is very keen to check tickets. Most mornings this doesn't happen until well past Stockport, but today he's spotted some dodgy looking characters and he's on the ball. Sure enough, they don't have valid tickets.
"That's a saver ticket and it's not valid on this train unless it's been bought on a Railcard"
"I didn't know"
"Well that's why I announced it before we left Manchester, and you were awake"
"How do you know I was awake?"
"Because you walked on to the train"
"Well I've got a Railcard anyway"
"Can I see it?"
"I haven't got it with me"
"That's OK, but you had to buy the ticket with it. If you haven't got it with you, you couldn't have bought the ticket with it, so it's an invalid ticket for this journey. You'll have to get off at Stockport and wait for an off-peak train after 8.30"
"Can't you give me a break?"
"I can give you a bill - standard single fare is £109 - or you can leave the train"

Stockport is only about 8-10 minutes from Piccadilly by train so it wasn't long after the train manager had left the vicinity (to mumbles of "Jobsworth" and "yeah, call the transport police, what do I care?" from the annoyed party) that we pulled into the station. No-one left the train and we set off again. A little while later the manager was back having consulted with his controller by radio. He asked the guy once more whether he was going to purchase a ticket and, faced with the reality of being handed over to the transport police at Wilmslow, he coughed up the difference between his saver ticket and a full fare - about £79.

The ticketing system is a lot simpler than it was, but is still arcane to an occasional traveller, and even though the various ramifications are explained over the PA system prior to departure it's easy to miss the finer points if you're a novice. A little while ago Virgin changed their policy so that saver tickets and various other kinds could not be purchased on board. The only ticket they will sell you on a train is a standard single fare. With every train manager being equipped with a mobile computerised ticket machine, this is another blatant rip-off. They could easily sell the cheapest valid ticket for the route, but choose not to, thus maximising their profits at the expense of the unwary, inexperienced, or anyone who has caught the train in a hurry. Hardly an incentive to start to use the trains if you're not a regular.