Get a ticket onto your phone, and through the gate
Buy a train ticket, find it again at the gate, and get it to scan first time.
A ticket on a phone is a barcode — a square block of dots that a scanner reads. Everything else on the screen is politeness.
The practice railroad below is called Wold Line and does not exist. Yours will look a little different, and every one of them has these same four steps: where to, which train, pay, download.
Key points
- Buy a ticket with your senior discount showing before you pay
- Download it to the phone so it works with no signal
- Find it and open the barcode full screen at the gate
- Turn the brightness up, and know exactly what to do if the gate stays closed
What to remember
- Download the ticket to the phone before you travel. Then it works with no signal at all.
- Downloaded means on the phone. Do it the night before, every time, and the station’s signal stops mattering.
- Brightness right up. It is the fix for most barcodes that will not read, on trains, in stores, everywhere.
Try this
Turn your own phone’s brightness right up and then right down, so your hand knows where that control lives. At a gate with a line behind you, that is not the moment to go looking for it.
Practice: Get a ticket onto your phone, and through the gate. Your first lesson is free, with no account or card; the rest are part of a Lantern plan. Interactive lessons require JavaScript.