MoonBuggy

Similar situation, I’m also looking for one if there’s another going spare!

Was just going to say, I don’t even remember there being a cherry one there before - is it new or has my brain just blocked it out for my own protection?

Might do! My thinking was that Monday cancellations as a knock-on from the weekend strike was the same rules as Wednesday knock-on from today's strike, but absolutely fair to say that's not certain (as if anything is right now!).

For those asking about peak/off-peak, it looks like we’re probably out of luck: “Your ticket is valid for the next available Great Western Railway service that's departing from Castle Cary, provided you're still within any relevant Operator and time conditions of your ticket (e.g. Off-Peak or Super Off-Peak).” Thats for the return half, but that “operator and time conditions” bit seems like it applies across the board, from what I can see.

@a6l6e6x ah, got you, that’s a real shame - we must’ve just got lucky having new seats assigned when they cancelled our original one. Keeping my fingers crossed but not relying on it, either way!

Did they announce that somewhere? Our seats are still showing in the Trainline app but don't know if that means much...

Nah, that's just a reason to have the scanners all on one network rather than totally independent from each other - not a flaw, just something to be aware of when building the system. That's where the "tried and tested" bit is extra helpful, means that there are plenty of people with experience setting these things up correctly! Resilience. One local network is a single point of failure, whereas multiple redundant connections to the wider internet give you far more possible routes to keep everything up and running. Sure, you could build three or four parallel local networks from scratch in case one goes down, but that's far more difficult and expensive than just using the internet - it would also be a more bespoke system with more chances for something to be set up incorrectly, vs totally off the shelf connectivity that's been tested to the extremes and proven to work. Again, it's not like this is new tech: basically every secure system you interact with is connected to the internet. Banking, communications, ticketing, healthcare, business - there are literally millions of people with decades of experience in doing this right, and any number of secure options exist for routing private data over public networks. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying digital ticketing is a panacea - but I do think it's the better option, and I haven't seen any of the specific issues you mention coming up at other events that use it. I would have thought just scan out, scan back in?

You can store a local copy of the full ticket DB with photos on every scanner without too much trouble - it'd fit on a £25 microSD with tens of gigs to spare, so no worries there. Main concern for the network would be making sure each code gets invalidated on all gates as soon as it's used, otherwise you'd get a lot of similar-looking mates getting multiple people in on copies one code. You could certainly do that with local systems, but if you're linking all the gates together anyway, either wired or wireless, you may as well link that network out to the internet as well so that the tech team can monitor and manage the whole thing more easily.

Huh, that's really interesting - wouldn't have expected it! Is that with just a normal USB cable? I wonder if they've designed them for multiple input voltages, in that case.

Absolutely agreed that they won't be copied in a way that gets past the gate, but I was more meaning that if someone's willing to scam then they'd be happy printing something that'll fool the buyer even if it won't fool the gate agent, which gives the same problem of people turning up and causing congestion/arguments. Any digital ticketing system I've seen lets you check your ticket code against the website to confirm the details, so that'd rule out selling totally fake codes entirely. I guess they could theoretically send the same, genuine, code to multiple buyers - but then that goes for any e-ticket event (football, other festivals, etc.) and I haven't heard of it being a significant problem?

Yeah they definitely cancelled our original Castle Cary train, moved us to a new time slot last week, and now they've cancelled the new one this morning and gone back to how it was originally!

Normal USB only gives you 5V, so you'd need more hardware than just the cable unfortunately (and the current may well be too low to use even after stepping up the voltage). Some (but not all) USB-C chargers also support PD mode up to 20V, but again you'd need the right circuitry to make use of it.

Haha, fair to say! QR code tickets are tried, tested, and proven - there's no reason they couldn't work seamlessly for lower cost than the current system if they hired the right people to do it. But it's fair to say that hiring the right people isn't always clear cut, and any change is a risk. I'd still prefer the move to e-tickets for multiple reasons, but I think we can all agree that if they don't want to go that way, the least they can do is assign someone to the phones for the ~3 weeks up to the festival to sort out the inevitable issues that will come up with logistics at this scale!

Surely that's the same as the risk of someone printing fake paper tickets? I'd feel sorry for the punters who got scammed either way, but you're not getting through the gate with a fake QR any more than you are with a ticket drawn in crayon.

Gotta remember that printing and posting alone is going to be on the order of quarter of a million quid every year, and that’s a conservative estimate! Scanners that can show the reg photos should be around £500 a pop if they buy them outright, or far less if they just contract the whole job. Network bandwidth for the whole system would be absolutely minimal, but for reliability you might want a few fallbacks at each gate to keep things moving if one fails (say 5G, a direct microwave link to the farmhouse, and maybe even a Starlink dish). They could have 400 scanners for £200k and plenty leftover for absolutely overkill triple-redundant networking at every gate, bought outright by the festival, for a single year’s postage costs. Contract it in from a company that has all the kit and actually makes use of it year round and it should be a good bit cheaper than the current system.