It empowered the Board of Trade to require any railway company to: Provision was made to enable the railway companies to issue debentures to pay for the capital cost of the equipment.

Several rail companies from 2020 privately prosecuted cases of alleged fare evasion under the Act using the Single justice procedure (SJP), whereby a lay magistrate can try cases without a court hearing.

However, the SJP cannot be used for the 1889 Act, and in August 2024 the UK's chief magistrate declared six test cases as void, as the process should never have been used.

At least some of the prosecutions were clearly not intentional evasion, which could not be tested in the SJP procedure; for example a man prosecuted for trying to pay a £3.50 fare at his destination as the ticket machine at the station he boarded from was not working, and there was no guard on the train.

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