APTIS ticket features

Tickets issued from British Rail's APTIS system had a considerable amount of detail, presented in a consistent, standard format.

This format has formed the basis for all subsequent ticket issuing systems introduced on the railway network – ticket-office based, self-service and conductor-operated machines alike.

Much of the following summary is therefore applicable to the other systems featured in the "British railway ticket machines (computerised)" section.

SUPERSAVER RTN, shown here, is a common type: a cheap-rate ticket for longer journeys, valid for one month but with time restrictions.

Any form of concession causing the fare to be reduced will be shown here – examples are: Always in DD.MMM.YY format, where MMM is a three-letter abbreviation of the month's name.

Non-standard abbreviations were used for some of the months, in order to make it harder to fraudulently alter a ticket's validity.

The theta symbol (θ) began to appear on APTIS tickets around late 1988, indicating that the magnetic strip on the reverse was encoded with data, allowing the ticket to operate the automatic barriers that were being installed at London Underground stations at the time.

The National Location Code (NLC) of the station or issuing point at which the machine is based.

Shows the historic region with which the NLC is associated: As sectorisation had happened by the time APTIS was introduced, these distinctions had lost some of their relevance.

At stations equipped with modern issuing systems (such as Fujitsu STAR), the window numbers often begin higher than 01, for example at 30.

A dagger (†; described in publications as a "Maltese cross") may appear before the route if the ticket is valid for a cross-London journey on the London Underground.

Although APTIS is no longer used, most National Rail tickets are printed to a similar design (Standard New Generation).