Permit me, if you will, a small rant about trains.
Well, not strictly about trains, per se. More about train tickets. Travel passes in particular.
I’ve got an annual travel pass for my commute to work. It costs, as you’d expect, quite a lot of money.
Why then does the blasted thing stop working so quickly?
Seriously, I’ve had about ten replacements so far this year. Sometimes the new pass lasts for a couple of months, other times it’s packed in after about a week. This latest one? Ten days.
Now, I’ve never had a problem getting a new pass from the station, but inevitably get a comment along the lines of “oh, that’s not lasted long, has it?”
No. No it hasn’t. Now, why do you think that might be?
And it’s pain having to get in early enough to have time to go and queue up to get a replacement.
I’m really careful with the pass. It lives in the plastic folder they gave me, in my bag. Away from anything magentic which might affect it.
As my pass often isn’t working in the machines, I have to queue up to wave my pass at the guy manning the barriers. One of them, without fail, asks everyone in the queue to put their ticket through the barrier before he’ll swipe them through.
“Take your ticket out and put it through the barrier.”
“It’s not working.”
“Put it through the barrier.”
“Right, fine.”
Put ticket through the barrier. OH LOOK. IT’S NOT WORKING.
Grunt. Swipe.
If it was working, why would I be queueing up? Surely I’d use the ticket in the barrier?
*deep breaths*
Why not give people with an annual or 6 monthly pass one of those plastic cards that the officials at the barrier have. Bit like an Oyster card. They seem to work quite well down in London, eh?
I’d even be happy to pay a little extra to get a card which I don’t have to replace every month.
espresso coco 
Is this made out of paper or flimsy plastic? That would irritate the heck out of me too, they must get through *a lot* of replacements.
It’s made out of card, with a magnetic stripe down the back so they can be read at the barriers. A couple of months ago they had a team doing replacements for people just the other side of the barriers – clearly it was a problem, they’d sourced some thicker card stock and said they’d last longer. To be fair to them, I think the one I got that day lasted a fair while.
I’m convinced that one or two of the barrier readers are screwing the tickets up, magnetically speaking.
Maybe at the next replacement team thing they’ll have sourced something else. Keep hoping! It’s a pity you can’t make a badge out of the broken ones, perhaps with “It doesn’t WORK” written on it or something.
sadly they keep the old ones. I keep wanting to ask the barrier guard guy where he got his as it seems to work pretty well.