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Cross London tickets rejected by ticket barriers at Lancaster Gate station

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embers25

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Lancaster Gate always rejects cross london tickets annoyingly given it is usually the shortest route to Paddington.
 
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robbeech

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Given that the barriers can pass the tickets when used at a National Rail interchange, you'd think they could be enabled for exit but not entry at all suitable stations, avoiding any random decisions. Can they not be configured differently for entry and exit?
What would be the result of this?

Sure, passengers would be able to do what they're entitled to do with the tickets they've paid for, but less additional tickets / penalties will be issued as a result. LU operate in the same way as NR do in that things are only ever rectified if the result will INCREASE their revenue. Unless of course they're forced to by a regulator, but they don't exist.
 

MikeWh

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Lancaster Gate always rejects cross london tickets annoyingly given it is usually the shortest route to Paddington.
That's quite poor really. Lancaster Gate to Paddington NR is a valid Oyster OSI.
 

MarlowDonkey

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From which other NR terminus is Lancaster Gate the quickest way to Paddington?
Would they have to be terminals? Changing at Stratford may work for east of London National Rail destinations.

It might be subjective, but the underground walk at Oxford Circus between the Central and Bakerloo seems as long as the walk from Lancaster Gate to Paddington and then there's the detour via Regents Park.
 

AlbertBeale

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Possibly Liverpool Street? But it's not the way I would go


I thought of L'pool St, but I'd be surprised if the Central being speedier than the H&C/Circle made up for the walking time. (And it's easy to get lost on that - admittedly shortish - walk if you don't know the way; I once took a wrong turn there, even as a long-time Londoner.) Add in the possibility of luggage (where the larger carriages on the SS lines are a help, as well as not bumping across several roads if going the Lancaster Gate way), and I can't really see why anyone would put that on a list of inter-terminal connections.

The OSI might have its uses for some tube journeys within London, given how not all lines have good interconnections without going on long diversions; but I don't see it as relevant for terminal-terminal journeys.

Would they have to be terminals? Changing at Stratford may work for east of London National Rail destinations.

It might be subjective, but the underground walk at Oxford Circus between the Central and Bakerloo seems as long as the walk from Lancaster Gate to Paddington and then there's the detour via Regents Park.

Yes - that is subjective! But anyway, if coming from another terminal, why would you be on the Central in the first place? If getting to Paddington from some parts of London, then leaving the Central at Lancaster Gate could make sense; but from other NR terminals, I can't think of one which doesn't have a (better) more direct connection. And this thread is about inter-terminal interchanges with cross-London tickets.

As for Stratford ... hmmm - not sure about that. Though I hadn't considered Stratford in the context of cross-London terminal-terminal links.
 
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stuu

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I thought of L'pool St, but I'd be surprised if the Central being speedier than the H&C/Circle made up for the walking time.
I'd be amazed if it isn't, the Circle line is prone to interminable delays (although that may be better since resignalling), and the H&C line is half the distance to Lancaster Gate from the concourse as well. When I worked at Moorgate and caught trains from Paddington I regularly went via Bank and Lancaster Gate unless it was raining
 

embers25

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Also the circle rarely runs at the weekend and always gets delayed at Edgware Road.
 

Ralph Ayres

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I'm looking at some gate data which says cross-London tickets are accepted at Lancaster Gate which makes me wonder if the problem is with how the tickets are coded. is it always for the same journey, and does the ticket have a cross printed on it in the route description (sadly not as visible as when it was a prominent Maltese cross)?
 

mikeb42

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I've used Lancaster Gate hundreds of times through the barriers with cross-London tickets involving Paddington between the late 1990s and up to a few days ago without problems. Aside from the usual prevalence of LU barriers with broken paper ticket readers that is...

What those tickets have all had in common is origin points on GWR routes. Could this have something to do with it? I thought tickets basically just had a flag on the magstripe to say "Maltese Cross" and it was no more nuanced than that even if the foggy written rules about routing are more restrictive. That's certainly how they seem to behave on walkup tickets when I've gone to an "apparently wrong" NR terminal such as Victoria to return from e.g. Southend to Bedwyn via Clapham Junction and Wokingham for meetings near Victoria and then Bracknell. Maybe there's some coding that can cope with or try to exclude all these complex possibilities but it seems a lot of effort for little return.

Lancaster Gate is often the best choice of interchange at Paddington for those in a hurry or during disruption. Circa 30-minute interchange from a GWR train at Paddington to a Greater Anglia train at Liverpool St (or the same train later at Stratford) is sometimes possible this way. Meanwhile, it is rather unlikely via the Hammersmith & City/Circle thanks to the distant and scattered platforms at Paddington and the erratic and too-infrequent spacing of Eastbound trains which often go on to get stuck at Edgware Rd and Baker Street junctions before grinding along the rest of the line like time is an illusion. Lancaster Gate is also useful when the Bakerloo is stuffed as a way to get to Victoria or Waterloo quickly via the Victoria and Jubilee respectively.

More generally, the H&C/Circle are relatively useless for those in a hurry and able to walk fast at Paddington wherever they are going if it is in central London. It is almost always quicker to get the Bakerloo to Baker Street and change there, or get the Central from Lancaster Gate and change as appropriate. Crossrail will presumably invalidate much of this when it finally opens in 2037...
 

swt_passenger

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I've used Lancaster Gate hundreds of times through the barriers with cross-London tickets involving Paddington between the late 1990s and up to a few days ago without problems. Aside from the usual prevalence of LU barriers with broken paper ticket readers that is...

What those tickets have all had in common is origin points on GWR routes. Could this have something to do with it? I thought tickets basically just had a flag on the magstripe to say "Maltese Cross" and it was no more nuanced than that even if the foggy written rules about routing are more restrictive. That's certainly how they seem to behave on walkup tickets when I've gone to an "apparently wrong" NR terminal such as Victoria to return from e.g. Southend to Bedwyn via Clapham Junction and Wokingham for meetings near Victoria and then Bracknell. Maybe there's some coding that can cope with or try to exclude all these complex possibilities but it seems a lot of effort for little return.

Lancaster Gate is often the best choice of interchange at Paddington for those in a hurry or during disruption. Circa 30-minute interchange from a GWR train at Paddington to a Greater Anglia train at Liverpool St (or the same train later at Stratford) is sometimes possible this way. Meanwhile, it is rather unlikely via the Hammersmith & City/Circle thanks to the distant and scattered platforms at Paddington and the erratic and too-infrequent spacing of Eastbound trains which often go on to get stuck at Edgware Rd and Baker Street junctions before grinding along the rest of the line like time is an illusion. Lancaster Gate is also useful when the Bakerloo is stuffed as a way to get to Victoria or Waterloo quickly via the Victoria and Jubilee respectively.

More generally, the H&C/Circle are relatively useless for those in a hurry and able to walk fast at Paddington wherever they are going if it is in central London. It is almost always quicker to get the Bakerloo to Baker Street and change there, or get the Central from Lancaster Gate and change as appropriate. Crossrail will presumably invalidate much of this when it finally opens in 2037...
Previous discussions have always explained it as a simple check for a cross London ”flag” on the ticket, with no check for it being an appropriate route between the origin and destination. Although the National Rail text says you can only use appropriate stations, I can’t see much point in a software check as well, I wonder how many people per day don’t use the obvious direct (or near direct) route?
 

kieron

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From which other NR terminus is Lancaster Gate the quickest way to Paddington?
I don't think embers25 said anything about travelling from a NR terminus to Paddington.

If you ask TfL for a daytime itinerary from West Ruislip to Reading with default settings, it suggests you use the Central Line to either Lancaster Gate or Notting Hill Gate. Entering 10:15am on Monday currently shows the former (as in the image below).

You would hope that a paper West Ruislip-Reading ticket would work every set of barriers you pass through. Or, at least, that you wouldn't be unreasonably delayed if it failed to work any of them.
 

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AlbertBeale

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I don't think embers25 said anything about travelling from a NR terminus to Paddington.

If you ask TfL for a daytime itinerary from West Ruislip to Reading with default settings, it suggests you use the Central Line to either Lancaster Gate or Notting Hill Gate. Entering 10:15am on Monday currently shows the former (as in the image below).

In fact, this thread was precisely about the problem of cross-London tickets not being accepted at Lancaster Gate, since some people find that a convenient place to interchange between the Underground and Paddington main line as part of a thruogh rail journey with a cross-London component. No-one has disputed that there are some journeys within London where walking Lancaster Gate - Paddington can be useful.
 

thedbdiboy

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It is just the 'maltese cross' that triggers LUL gates. There's no break of journey and I seem to recall (certainly in the past) that within Zone 1 you could leave at a non-BR terminal but just wouldn't be able to go back in again (e.g. Euston to Green Park then walk the rest of the way to Victoria).
 

Nicholas43

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Have we established whether there is or was some temporary glitch at the Lancaster Gate gates, or are they again accepting entry and exit with any Maltese Cross ticket - as in my experience they always did before The Plague?
I don't believe that TfL is clever enough to programme them to accept only tickets for which Paddington is on a permitted route. (Cambridge Kings Cross Paddington Reading Basingstoke Southampton, for instance.)
 

AlbertBeale

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It is just the 'maltese cross' that triggers LUL gates. There's no break of journey and I seem to recall (certainly in the past) that within Zone 1 you could leave at a non-BR terminal but just wouldn't be able to go back in again (e.g. Euston to Green Park then walk the rest of the way to Victoria).

My experience too - you can leave the system anywhere en route between terminals if you want (though there seem to be issues sometimes with LU staff not accepting this if the gates don't let you out); but you can't then get in again to continue your cross-London transfer by tube on the same ticket.
 
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