Re: {nsw} When to change trains

[Dave Proctor <david@sd3.mailbank.com>]

On Wed, 30 May 2001 05:38:39 -0400, Maikha V Ly
<maikha@MailAndNews.com> wrote:

>I simply don't know why, rarely, I bought a ticket from Penrith to Central 
>once, apparrently instead of printed City on my ticket, it printed Milson's 
>Point!

Reason for this is that the fare is the same as the fare to Central,
so the booking office clerk merely has to press one key ("Milsons
Point") compared to pressing three (to enter the three digit code for
Central) - it does not sound like much, but you can imagine how long
it would take if they looked up the code for every single passenger
who went up to the window.

>At Central had a 30sec seige with a CSA, thinking I was breaking the fare, 
>but 
>she let me through since the ticket made it through the machine!

This is silly. If you have a ticket from Penruff to Milsons Point,
there is no reason for you to be hassled at Central, unless they
thought you were trying to break your journey on the way back.

But why was there a problem anyway? As you say, the gates let you
through, so why did the CSA become involved?

>From what I believe, tickets are charged by shortest distance so Cityrail 
>'expects' you to go that distance.
>You can get off at a station and join another service later, as long as you 
>don't exit the station (I do that occasionally in the Blue Mountains)

My information is that you can use whatever route you like, but you
can only break your journey (on weeklies or longer) on the shortest
route, and if you terminate your journey short, you can only exit on
the shortest route.

So someone with a Glenfield to Central ticket will be fine whichever
of the five routes they use, but may encounter difficulties if they
try and exit a station half way along (if it is not on the shortest
route).

Dave