2014 National Rail ticket features

In 2014, a new design was introduced for train tickets issued on the National Rail network in Great Britain. The pre-2014 design was similar to the APTIS design introduced in 1986 by British Rail.

The 2014 design was intended to give passengers more information.

The first computerised ticket issuing system on the British railway network was INTIS, introduced by British Rail on a small scale in 1981 as an interim stage before the mid-1980s launch of the All Purpose Ticket Issuing System (APTIS). INTIS produced credit card-sized tickets on which the data was laid out in a particular pattern consisting of fields of a set length printed on four horizontal lines across the ticket. Class of travel and a ticket type description were on the top line; below this came the date of travel, ticket number and information about discounts or concessions; then came the origin station, validity information and fare paid; and on the bottom line was printed the destination station and any route restriction that applied. The APTIS system continued with a slightly adjusted version of this layout; and when it was superseded in the mid-2000s by "New Generation" systems such as Shere SMART and Cubic FasTIS, these continued to issue tickets in the same format.

In March 2012, the Department for Transport (the government department responsible for transport matters in England) released a report, Rail Fares and Ticketing Review. Its remit was to analyse the market for rail travel, the setting of fares and the ways in which tickets were booked and issued. From this it sought to make recommendations about finding alternatives to printed tickets and improving the "complex and confusing" fares and ticketing structure. A three-month consultation period followed. Passengers, interest groups such as Passenger Focus, the rail industry itself and other parties were asked about their priorities and ideas. The result was a second report (Rail Fares and Ticketing: The Next Steps), published in October 2013. Its wide-ranging set of strategic aims included a proposal to undertake a "fundamental redesign" of rail tickets.

...
Wikipedia