Revenue protection anyone?

[Richard Trevithick]

As many of you know, being a dead engineer means I have plenty of time to borrow a body for the day and explore our once great railway.

One thing that has shocked me over the last few weeks is the number of large stations without anybody securing the gateline, meaning anyone can walk in without a ticket. I'm not just talking about one horse towns like Meopham, Maze Hill or Shoreham, I'm talking Dartford (my adopted hometown), Sevenoaks and London terminals such as Victoria, plus many many many others! Needless to say, the undesirables have cottoned on to the fact that they can get a free ride as there is nobody going to stop them. Why is Govvex allowing this? Will these gatelines be properly manned soon? Why the sudden relaxation in hours the gatelines are manned? This is hardly fair on the fare-paying public!

Do the Revenue Officers still exist? It appears that nobody has seen them for months and months now! At least these mobile staff were once a deterrent to many. Now due to the significant lack of their presence the undesirables are taking over the trains once more.

Has anyone else noticed this? What can be done? Are Govvex responsible for our security, or is that down to us?

I'm just glad it's not my real body and my real money I'm using. There are advantages to being on the other side. I just feel sorry for the living who have yet to cross over.


RT

[Shivering Timers]

This is my first post to the board so thought I'd try this out on the above topic.
As a regular train user I also have definitely noticed that there seem to be less staff around these days, paticularly gates with no one staffing them. Every now and then you would see ticket inspectors or railway police walking through trains but come to think of it I haven't seen these either

Shiv

[Richard Trevithick]

Welcome to the group, ST.

What I didn't let on when posting my original message several days ago is I had access to a living body for the whole of last week. Within a few days of posting, there were plenty of revenue staff at many locations. It's as if they were all called back from holiday and forced to work overtime - or just told to go out and actually work! Now, is this just coincidence, or are SET actually paying attention to this forum and reacting accordingly?

I'm back on "the other side" now, so I'd appreciate it if some of the regular commuters could comment on this over the coming weeks.

Kind regards,

RT

[Tim Wilson]

I have a ticket which covers London Zones 1 to 4. Twice in the past week I have had evening appointments in Bromley, so have bought ticket extensions to Bromley South (Zone 5). Now, I would never advocate fare dodging, but on each occasion I need not have bothered with a ticket, as in the height of the evening peak, the automatic gates at Bromley South - which I believe is the busiest station on the SE network outside the London terminals - were open and no staff were visible.