page_title: Train ticket
section_title: Seat checks
hierarchical_section_title: Train ticket / Seat checks
caption_attribution_description: English: Seat checks (over the head) on an Amtrak Northeast Regional train as it crosses the Susquehanna river (bridges can barely be seen in background)
context_page_description: A train ticket is a ticket issued by a railway operator that enables the bearer to travel on the operator's network or a partner's network. Tickets can authorize the bearer to travel a set itinerary at a specific time, a set itinerary at any time, a set itinerary at multiple times, or an arbitrary itinerary at specific times. The last two categories are often called passes: the former is often sold as a discounted block of trips for commuters; the latter is often sold to vacationers, such as European Eurail passes.
  In some countries, like Italy, and some local railways in Germany, conductors are not used. Instead passengers are expected to validate tickets in a special stamping machine before entering the train. A system of coupons that are validated with a special machine exists on the Mumbai Suburban Railway where combinations of coupons of different denominations are used to get the corresponding ticket value. There may or may not be a conductor later on double-checking that correct tickets are actually held.
context_section_description: In the USA, a conductor may also provide the passenger with a seat check — another voucher indicating how far the passenger may travel on the system — or attach it over the seat also punched by the conductor showing the passenger's destination, along with conductors organizing train seating by destination during boarding. Some systems (Amtrak, for instance) have two-part tickets that permit the passenger to retain a cancelled ticket stub; others (the New Jersey Transit and Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority commuter rail systems, for instance) do not. Seat checks are changed frequently to ensure that passengers cannot retain and reuse them from journey to journey. (Conductors typically collect checks before stops to prevent this.)
caption: Seat checks above the heads of the passengers, on an Amtrak train (Northeast Regional) in 2012.
exif: {}