Do you ever arrive at a train station early only to gaze up at the timetable in utter confusion as you search for your train? As you stand there bewildered, do you ever wonder if there is a better way to present this kind of information?

In this week’s episode, we discuss the exciting topic of train timetables. Why are there different train scheduling systems in different places and can technology help to cut through the complexity? We discuss London postcodes, the perils of standardisation and Shannon entropy. We also reveal the most complicated line on the London Underground network and offer a suite of our own solutions for optimising train travel. Sit back and enjoy the journey.

For more information on Aleph Insights visit our website https://alephinsights.com or to get in touch about our podcast email [email protected]

Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer, for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts, we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Peter Coghill and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights, and this week we're discussing Peter's problem with Waterloo Station. Um, Peter, tell us about this problem of yours. Right, so... But we'll just keep it to the Waterloo one, yeah?

For God's sake, get away from Platform 5!

So it would be... That's a very good thing, right? It was a really, really good board, and it was positioned in such a way that you could walk in the door, and as your vision allowed it to come into focus, within half a second you'd know exactly when the next train is going, and you'd be able to reference the clock at the bottom of the screen, and which platform you have to head to. So it was really, really super efficient.

And it really slices through everything, because it's often a busy situation, lots going on, lots of sensory overload there, and often you might be in a hurry as well.

But so the problem was, about a month ago, this board had been taken away and replaced with more traditional information boards, and I was slightly taken aback. I then had to sort of spend ages trying to find the right train. Now, I don't know how trains work in other countries, but often if you're not going to the terminal point on a train line, the train is known by the terminal point and the time, so if you want to go to, for example, Alton, you actually get on the Portsmouth train, which obviously doesn't make any sense when you're thinking about what you're trying to do. So I was looking for Hazelmere, where I live, it wasn't there. I had to wait for three or four refreshes of the screen as it cycles through, because it would be on the second page. And there's always the fear that there's going to

be an earlier one, which hasn't got to Hazelmere yet. You know that this train goes there, but you want the next one. And it's even possible that the next train to Hazelmere isn't going to get you to Hazelmere the quickest. Exactly. Yeah. Whereas, so, you know, that, yeah. Next fastest

train to should be the only information board. Well, yeah. It just struck me that this was taken away. So I inquired, I had a few minutes till my train left after I spent five minutes working out when the next train was. I inquired, I asked one of the station staff what was going on. And he was as surprised as I was. He said, yes, loads of people complained. I wasn't complaining. I was just observing and asking why. And I said, you know, why? What was the reasoning? And he didn't have one. He just said management. God, them again. Anyway, the problem is fixed because they seem to have reinstated it. It's an error of their ways. Last time I looked on Tuesday, it was back

again. Well, well, that's great. So we can know because this is touched on perhaps my biggest complaint in the British transport system. And it's this. Exactly what Peter said. The UID for a train. What's the UID? Unique identification, basically. So how you know, how you differentiate one train from another. Yeah. In the UK is a destination. Yeah. And a time. Yeah. The 342 to Hastings is a train that for those in the know, the cognoscenti, the people who live in Hastings and get that train every day, they know all the 17 places it stops. Right. But I might be going to one of them 17 places and I'm not an expert. In fact, it might be my first time outside London for weeks. Yeah. And I'm somehow expected to be an expert on the bloody trains. It's so annoying. And now let me. So we've explained, I think, for people who live outside the UK, that's how trains work in the UK. Yeah. Is it not like this in other countries? The country of London is not. And let me tell you why. Because in London, on the underground trains, they have a totally different system based on lines. You get on the right line and that's all you need to know. There's actually one thing you need to know. Well, and the direction it's going in. Right. That's the one thing you need to know. So there's one bit of information. Well, you might need to know because

if it branches and you don't want to open up. Well, you need to know the line and the direction.

flights somewhere. Well, in scheduled flights, they're not. Scheduled flights, the same flight number will be going either every day or every week. I know, but that's fine if I know I'm going

from here to there then. But if I want to explore options, like say, for example, I could look at the Pigazilli line and I could go, well, you know, okay, that's sort of in bank or chairing cross is quite close to Leicester Square. So in fact, if I was getting a northern line, I could get off at Leicester Square and I'd probably be nearby. There's absolutely nothing like that with planes. It would be great if there was like a route, you could say, oh, that plane is on this route. And

as long as I get on that route. Yeah, if there was some way of encoding into the name of the flight, the direction it went and where it flew over and where it stopped. It's not unlike that whole

debate we had about what three words, you know, that actually it would be handy if there was some information that would so I could say, well, I'm looking at this flight, but I can also look at these other flights that are nearby. There's nothing like that. You've got to search hundreds

of them individually. I was thinking the same, actually. I was also thinking about the what three words thing we did and also but in relation to I think there's downsides to giving numbers to trains. But let me chuck a few things out there and let's sort of see what sticks. So, for example, I think one thing you said that's interesting, which was, hey, why aren't and I know this is not really what we're talking about, but hey, the bus lines don't operate like tube lines. No, they do. Well, no, in as much as we don't give them a colour or a name. I think that's interesting. Why might that be? Because I think that might inform the stuff. Why aren't trains also like tubes? And just off the top of my head, I think with buses, I think it's to do with just there's just probably so many routes. Yeah, it'd be too many colours. I think that's part of it. And and yeah, too many routes also just for the names as well. So it makes sense to use numbers. That's just off the top of my head.

If you put it in the tube system, though, if you got rid of all the colours and just gave them all numbers, get rid of the colours and the names just gave. So you're going for the line number and I'm going five stops south. It works just as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The colour is just there for really quick reference as long as you haven't got colour blindness.

Yeah, but also it's more fun because I've been to countries where they've got, oh, go along one or three or ten and it's boring. Yeah, you want a bit of spice in your life. Thinking about trains.

You've got a bit of that, you know, that when you read about old trains and people say they got the Scots Flyer to Darlington and you think imagine knowing that your train had a name. Yeah, that's really cool. And I don't think they have that anymore. You can't get on a train with a name.

They do, but they're not as I mean, I just think the Flying Scotsman was just particularly famous.

But no one because no one would. But yeah, you might say, well, I'm going to get the Flying Scotsman. I'll see you in Fife tomorrow. You know, I don't think anyone says that now. No. You know, you get the you get the 950 to Edinburgh Waverley and they change.

So let's think about, I mean, why aren't trains like the Tube? I suspect it's to do with one, you probably, I think it's interesting, it's longer distances. I think too. Is there anything to do? Are there more stations or not? I think I don't know. But it's to do with trains. I don't think trains on their lines don't stop at all the stations in the same way that they do on Tubes. And I'm sure that's a connection here. And then the other thing is they're not as interconnected as Tubes, which lines kind of help for that. I mean, of course, they do connect, you know, if you want to change at Darlington to whatever.

But Piccadilly Line doesn't occasionally become a Victoria Line train at Finsbury Park, for

example. Although it does in New York, that kind of happens.

Really? You get on the A train and suddenly you're on the G train.

Yeah, I've probably totally misrepresented it, but it does stuff like that. You've got to be very clear which train you get on.

There are some weirdnesses around Circle Line and District Line. Yeah. When you've got two flavours of train on the same line. Yeah, and I'm never quite sure if... And it's difficult to work out. I wish they'd just paint the bloody trains.

That's it. You get on what you think is a District Line. Doesn't sound very configurable. And it's all painted yellow, but it turns out, which is the Circle Line colour, but it turns out, don't worry, you are on District Line and that can be discombobulating.

Well, actually, I've got a special mention of the Circle Line a bit later on. OK. Because for an exciting reason, which will let readers think about.

Yeah, so those were just my initial sort of things about where do we want to focus our minds in the immediate sort of...

It's not really going to take it in advance anywhere, but the traditional train view, the time, destination, then it'll say platform, then underneath it'll list all the stations it's going to.

I'm going to stop you, Peter, and sorry, just really briefly, the number thing, I think the downside of the number thing is a bit like with what three words, how the number doesn't relate to anything. If you've got a train called a 406 and another one called the 708 and one's for there's just no relation between the number and the location, where at least if it's... Even if you're going only as far as Hastings and it goes all the way to Folkestone, at least you know there's a relation between the Folkestone train and... Do you see what I mean?

Ignoring the B roads, the motorways and A roads, there is a regional numbering. So if you go up north to sort of North England, they all start six something. And then if you're anywhere around the M3, there'll be A3 something. So there is a regional convention. Are you telling me there's a secret code that nobody's ever taught me? No, if you look at a map, you will spot the pattern that if you sort of circle all the A3s and M3s, then they kind of group together, kind of cluster together. I'm not convinced. We're going to come up against Kent, it's all two something or other.

I just need a yes no answer because I've researched this unusually for me, not now, but months ago. London postcodes. Do you know how they work and why they're like they are, the numbers aspect? Do you mean, do I know the history of the postcodes? Well, do you know why you might be in an N postcode and you're in, so we know there's N for Northern.

They're alphabetic, aren't they? Well, not really. So like they would be the post office, the head of the post office.

So the first one, so the one, so let's say you're in the N postcode in North London.

N1 Islington.

Let's say there's 20 postcodes there, for example, in the N section. And it's weird because you can in Islington N1, but next door is N14 and then next to it is N4. And there's just no, yeah. And the reason why is because the one is, as you say, is like the head post office for that region. Which would be probably Mount Pleasant, I would have thought. Who knows. But then every single, and then they change the system because then every other one is to do with the alphabet of what that borough is.

Talking about weird mishmash and not meaningful to any human at all. Peter, I feel, sorry, I completely cut you off. You were going to go off.

I've totally forgotten what I was, no, yes, right. So those traditional train information signs where you have the destination time platform and then a big list of where it's going, often scrolling to two or three or four pages, which is just a pain. That's the train operator's view of how the trains work. If you ask the train, the guy, the people in the control centre, oh, can you just give me a list of your top favourite trains, top most used trains, they would be able to do it. They would list them like that. And you say, okay, well, where are these going? That's how they would see this thing. And when they're looking at their information board, they see, you know, 402 to Portsmouth at a certain time, they see it on the line, they can sort of picture it that way. But as a punter where you're entering this sort of system, you've got no overall sort of picture of what's going on. I don't care about where these trains are going. If I'm going to Portsmouth or I'm going to, I don't care what train stations in between, irrelevant to me. I just want to know what the next train to Hazelmere is.

So I think, Frazee, what you said earlier, which was essentially that this is explicable using Shannon entropy, is where I would go as well. So no, don't go putting words into my mouth. I know what you're doing. Because, okay, so what are the complicated tube lines? This is about information theory, isn't it? Good, good, good man. But specifically, how much information you need to make the right decisions, say in this case. So as I was saying, as long as, okay, so you need to know which line you're on. I don't know how many there are, 15 lines now, maybe on the tube. But, you know, so that's what four bits of entropy and then you need to know the direction. What does entropy mean? I forgot what it means. Each bit is like halving. Literally, how many zeros or ones you would need to encode the precise information you need to a level of detail that you need it to be at.

This was really simple until you started explaining it.

Five bits of info will get you onto the right tube line going in the right direction. Okay. Now, the most complicated tube line, strictly speaking. Well, let me guess. Not, okay, but I'm not including light railways.

No, okay. It's either going to be circle and district for particular reasons or Piccadilly line. I think Piccadilly line is quite simple. Very hot, the Piccadilly line.

You've got that annoying twiddly bit around Piccadilly airport which makes it complicated.

Just as an aside, the Victoria line is very hot. Yeah, I don't know. Okay, well. Metropolitan.

No, it is the district because that's got more end points. So in principle, right, the number of configurations of the routes that a district line train can take. Now, I don't know enough about the actual way it works, but in theory, I think there's like sort of eight or something potential routes. The Northern line, four, because there's two branches. Yeah. It branches up in the north and it branches around the city. But actually, in terms of what you need to know, you only ever need to know one of those things because you're never going to care how it gets there. Anyway, there we are. So trains, big problem. As you said, as soon as you start switching on or off different stations, it's massively increased the information content required. So if there are 10 stations on a line and it could either stop or not stop any of them, suddenly you need 10 bits of information. So there's like two to the 10 possible configurations for that. So I think that explains why we have different setups. You know, there's no information about it stopping or not stopping at different stations on the tube because the answer is the same. It stops all of them. And then it becomes a matter of designing tube lines that are sort of maximally useful for actually plotting a route, which is where the circle line comes in, because the circle line is, in theory, I think this is true. I think I might have discovered this. I don't think this is one of those tube facts. I think the circle line is the only line which has no stations or in the line which belongs entirely to itself. I think every other tube line has at least somewhere where it's just that line and nothing else. So does the circle line not have one station? No, no. So in that sense, the circle line can be said to be sort of entirely fictitious. It's a polite fiction that we've created to make life easier for ourselves as navigators. Someone out there is probably going to tell me that's wrong. Does it have any of its own sections of track? Or is it always relying on other? Maybe in real life, but not on the map. There's no track which isn't doubled by some other line. So anyway, that points to, okay, that's the issue you've got. If it stops at every line, it's actually really easy. You design a new line. If it turns out there's enough people going that way, that it's easier than having them change. And obviously, you've got an enormous problem with trains because of the way that they switch on or off. And so, yeah, that, I think, explains why.

There's also another dimension. It'd be related to the switching stations on and off. But you get the normal commuter and then you get the express, which may go to the same destination and may have the same stops. But one will be faster than the other.

Yeah, and because it's not stopping at some. Because it's not stopping. You said it was stopping at the same ones.

I would imagine, I bet there's a play, I bet there's a destination, probably not a terminal destination. But for a train that, well, a train that's something around the 4.15 to somewhere that's only got no, it has got no intermediate stops and there'll be an express and there'll be a commuter.

Could be, but I think the key point is that having a tube stop at every station actually might not be the best way of doing it. But you can't really have an express tube because it's one single line. They can't overtake. But I mean, that aside, it might be sensible, for instance, sometimes of day to switch off chunks of the network or whatever. But we don't. We actually accept a cost to simplify it. So to reduce the information content required to explain and to navigate, we simplify the system. So that is one response to this level of complexity. I have others and Peter might be able to suggest some ways around this problem.

Sorry, I don't understand what question we're trying to frame here, because what we've said is two things. First of all, Peter had his issue at Waterloo. The good people at Waterloo station have now rectified that because there was a threat of uprising and rebellion. One. Two, we've talked about a little bit about why certain systems are certain ways. And but you're still framing it as a problem, as an issue, as a question. I mean, all we've all we've said is that what's suboptimal here?

But why? What's suboptimal? Because this Peter's special board only exists at some station. I mean, you can rock up to Portchester and you'd be like, well, I've got to work out whether this next train goes to Victoria or whether it goes to Waterloo. And if so, does it go via three bridges, which for some reason is of some great mystical importance to train people? If it goes to three bridges, it's a whole different thing. And you need a different kind of ticket, a place I've got no interest in or certainly not getting out there. And it's like that. You use trains. Not as nice as four bridges. Then you've got the whole bloody, you know, this train is dividing at, you know, Southbourne and you've got to be in the front four coaches. And you never know which they are because you don't know which coach you're on and all of that business. It's just a nightmare. So what I'm saying is, how can we fix this and make life as easy as possible so that we don't need Peter's special board? We can just go and get on a train and know that it's the right train and we're in the right place and we can get off in the right place.

So good. We've turned ourselves from moaners, which we know we're not that, into solution providers. Nick, what's your solution then?

Well, I've touched on simplification. Incidentally, I looked at toasters. It's a very similar issue. How many types of toaster does Russell Hobbs make? 24. 79. Good Lord. Yeah. Smeg have so many ovens that I couldn't count them all. But I noted that they are divided into about 10 different... There's a taxonomy of 10 different features that you can have, like the aesthetic, the colour, the component finish, whether it has a pizza oven, what power supply it uses. It's a problem everywhere. There's a problem that you have a wide variety of products, one of which is going to be good for you. And you have to wade through tons of stuff to get to it. Is the answer communism? It might be. That's the simplification argument. It's like, look, this is too complicated and we waste too much time farting about. We'll just have one type of oven and it's this nice red one. And when you turn the thing, it comes on. And when you turn it off, it goes off. And the equivalent, I think, in trains would be to standardise, to put lines down and say that that is this line and it stops every stop. And, you know, that's it. You get on. OK, fine. Nobody ever gets on or off at, you know, Ashworth. But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because one guy a month needs to use that station. So but that's so that's the simplification method. But I think I don't know. I wonder if Peter has anything more sophisticated because I've had some thoughts along these lines.

Well, I think I think signage, wayfinding signage and stations is probably can be improved. I mean, this board does the perfect job. I think we all agree this board is the best thing ever invented. It should never have gone. It should never, never. Hold on.

Isn't the solution not to change the system just to make sure you've always got this board in place? I will.

I would have. I would have more. I'd have more similar boards. I'd get rid of the old train information. Nobody needs to see that. That's in a leaflet. You can get that and peruse it at your leisure. But have a similar board that shows you similar information but divided in some useful way. So, for example, if on commuter trains, whether or not you have a ticket that's valid for express trains or not is important. So if you get if you're travelling to, say, Bristol from Paddington and you haven't got an express train, if you get on the express train with your normal ticket, you're in big trouble.

And God forbid you get on outside peak hours. Outside peak hours, yeah. What a peak hour? No one knows. They won't tell you.

First thing would be just a static clock with red sections saying when is peak hour and when is not peak hours for this station because it's not standard. It depends where you're going. So it's something to do with what if it gets in to London, if the train gets into London five minutes before nine o'clock in the morning on a Tuesday with your brother's put their coat on the top peg kind of bizarre. But it's a known thing. So why not write it down and put it on a board?

Yeah, so Peter's basically so we've got the solution of simplified so that we don't really need the information. We've got Peter's solution of informatize so that the information is more readily available, both of which are good. We've got my solution. I'm going even further. Go on, what's your solution?

My solution, as I said, don't change the system. Just have, you know, the thing that Peter finds really useful, the next train to have that everywhere, every single station.

I think that's the best to provide more information. But I want a board that says, if you've got this kind of ticket, look at this board. If you've got this kind of ticket, look at this board because your destination will change. So let me lay this down.

This is a total disaster. What? Okay. Why so? Okay, for a couple of reasons. First of all, you're being rather selfish about this and you are only thinking about it from the immediate needs of the user. Silly me. What about, you know, overloading the system and trains crashing into each other because it turns out that everyone wanted to go to X and also to Y and so the trains, I mean, you'd be overloading the system. You just, you design your software so that that doesn't happen.

I think that we've more or less solved the problem of trains crashing into each other.

But also, no, but well, okay, but overloading the system. But also, and then it might be that the answer to overload, because you were saying that the trains would depart at different times to what they usually do. There's no standard.

There is no standard, just like cars do, just like trains do.

So you will then overload the system and you will be less overloaded.

Do you mean you would overload the current system or do you mean you could never define, derive such a system that would work?

You would overload the current system and then in your new system, you would end up developing some norms and one of those norms might be that trains leave at a certain agreed time all the time so that you didn't overload the new system.

You just design a better system. We're giving ourselves pretty far-reaching powers to redesign the whole railway network and you would need it. The current system would never work because you'd end up with all the trains backing up somewhere and one of the reasons we have a timetable is so that they can schedule the return of trains to where they're going to be busy and they move them around and they shift them between lines and things.

Still not convinced. Then the other thing is actually there's something really useful.

Have you heard of a company called Amazon? You might order a DVD of The Railway Children today and a Jane Austen novel tomorrow because you're in that kind of mood. They didn't know that you were going to do that. Does it overwhelm their system? No, it does not because their system is designed to be flexible and they have drivers who go to places because they need to deliver something. I don't think you can have the same flexibility around transporting people. It's exactly the same.

No, because they're going to very fixed places for a start. That's even easier.

It makes it even easier than having to do it with every single address in the whole UK and roads.

Transporting people is not the same as transporting things. Why? Because they're bigger and they need to do certain things.

You can't accommodate that by the fact that trains are bigger.

You can't leave people in a van overnight. You can't store them all up in some massive warehouse somewhere and get them boxed out

by a railway car. It's not directly analogous, but there'll be similar kinds of optimisation algorithms required. I totally agree. And I would also go as far as to make the trains would be smaller. It could just be one carriage. One carriage might rock up.

Each carriage would be independently electrically powered and you might all get on this one train and then that might split off into eight different carriages, all of which are going to a different little destination. One might end up at a little branch line with five people on it. It's fine.

I'm imagining a highly modular little railway trolleys. They have maybe four seats in them.

But all going left and right and back and forth and going across points which are switching hundreds of times a second. And then there's got to be fab.

There's a huge amount of investment required to get rid of the old infrastructure. No, the infrastructure is fine.

Leave the rails where they are. And the trains themselves. The carriage points are all currently all automatically controlled. You know, the trains can be self-driven now. I think, yeah, to a degree, it can be retrofitted to the current system.

But in order to maximise... I can't believe you're on his side with this.

No, no, I'm totally on board with this. I'm totally on board with this. It's the opposite of stupidifying it. At the moment, we stupidify the system to make it easier for people to understand and to make it predictable. I'm just saying that we don't need to do that. We can make it fit the needs of the users.

Yeah, because you are starting to sound a bit like an old 18th century canalsman when they're building the railway saying this will never work because the infrastructure doesn't support it. Well, I'm not proposing we drive trains on canals. I'm saying we drive our sort of sleek pod things on the new network that comes alongside the trains.

So when the revolution comes, I'll be the first with my back to the wall. You won't, because the minute you get...

Just like you with the Waze app. The minute you turn up at the station and your train turns up within three minutes on demand and gets you there 20 minutes earlier than it would have done, you'll be sold.

No.

Yeah, and you'll be raving about this new system.

Because also there's something also that's nice about trains is that when they work as they should, is that everyone understands what time you're arriving somewhere. And actually, although with cars, for example, where it's more fluid, you'd be faster or slower, that adds unpredictability for the people at the other end and for yourself.

Well, I'd say the amount of times that trains are delayed easily swamps that extra predictability vis-a-vis car travel. People accept that unpredictability in car travel and bus travel and plane travel. I don't see where we can't...

Classic Fraser.

Yeah. Just make it all up. OK, look, I don't know.

This new system, this new old transport system we're describing, why don't we just use cars? Why don't we just have automated Ubers if we're doing this? Take the rails away.

Take the rails away and just have more roads. Skycars.

OK, another podcast. I think that is an interesting idea.

Um, look, we need to kind of wrap up. Or a bit like meetings. You know, let's not just have meetings. Let's say in the same way. Let's just stay at home, right?

The rails could be automated. Cars could just drive onto the rails and use the rails as a super fast type of road and then come off again at the other end and drive you to Helvard and Hall, wherever you're going.

But why can't they just be super fast kinds of cars on roads?

Well, I would imagine that certain kinds of physical constraints make driving on a rail more efficient. Probably more efficient. Yeah, you've got minimal surface contact.

So it's sort of you have to trade the efficiency for all that infrastructure investment when you're building the rails. Oh, it's fun stuff. No. If all cars were totally autonomous, so around the M25 and all the motorways, if you were not allowed to drive a manual car on there anymore, everything was fully autonomous. We'd all be going at 300 miles an hour. Cars could be going really, really fast, really, really close together.

Yeah, I've often thought that. And that time is coming soon. Two things. One, I'm really pleased actually to see that at the beginning of this episode, when I talked about the reasons why it might be that the systems are different, is you agreed with me, OK? You thought the same as me. Landstone, yeah, milestone moment there. Yeah, well, and not only that, but it makes me particularly pleased because you'd obviously spent some time thinking about this and using your own resources.

You just wung it.

Yeah, this is it. I said, do you know what? I reckon it's this. And turns out I was right. Or certainly as right as you. And so I've had...

Out of the mouths of babes and suchlies.

Yeah, but I'd had time sort of just, you know, just watching rubbish on Netflix and stuff while you're busy researching and turns out I'm right. It's not necessarily a win though, is it? And it's not a strategy to rely on, is it Fraser?

Well...

This is one time in however many times. Oh no, I'm always right. I'm always right with these intuitions, you know? All right. That's the first thing. Second thing, actually, you would be less bothered about the train, you know, this system being changed, right, if you were not paying to go on the train, right? So this is I have a confession to make. Many times in the past, especially when I was younger, I would sort of, you know, not get a ticket when it was easier to do then than it is now. And it was great because it was free. Now, you know, literally a free rider, right? But it wasn't free. Other people were paying. Other people, yeah. It was free for me. Free at the point of use.

Yeah. For you.

Yeah. But it just makes me think of... It was theft. Theft of services. But also, I think two days in a row, I got caught by the same person as I was traveling on a train from when I was much younger from Bedford into London. Now, imagine me at about 25 years old, right? I'm pretty charming now, yeah? Yeah. And I know how to sort of get on with people. At 25, I was the same, except more beautiful, less bored, just like more winning, you know, and I think... Hard to conceive, but okay. And I remember the guy, the conductor, I can't remember if it was... I think it was the first day, said to me, tickets, please. And I said, oh, I don't have one. And he said, why not? And I think they get used to, oh, I was running for... Oh, you know. And I said, I didn't think anyone would be checking. Okay. And he just went, and just, you know, it sort of took him back a little bit. And he went, oh, all right. With my honesty. Yeah. I'm a thief. That's the answer. And he went, all right, have a good journey. And that was it. He just left it at that. And then I think the second day, I think it was actually a different conductor, I said the same thing. You know, have you got a ticket? No, I haven't. Why not? I didn't think there'd be anyone here. And he said, oh, don't worry. And someone dropped this, and he pulled out a ticket that someone, and he gave it to me. You're a legend.

However, we don't advise our listeners to do this. We don't advise our listeners to break the door. No.

I don't know if this is another anecdote. I think I might be the last generation to really benefit from the sort of kind of free riding that you mentioned. So in certain stations around London, and certainly other regional stations, they had this concept of buying a permit to travel, which was like, you put 5p in the smallest denomination the machinery would accept, and you get a ticket, which is basically a declaration that you were willing to pay for a ticket, but for whatever reason, the ticket office hadn't quite got round to it, or whatever. It was just like, but then when you got to a destination off, and there was no checking, and there was no barriers, you could just walk off.

Seems like there's no downside.

There was no downside. Basically, lots of people got sort of 5p rail travel for years and years. Apart from an underfunded railway system.

Yeah, the legacy of a creaking infrastructure, thanks to you, Peter. Yeah, and me.

Okay, let's stop there. Yeah. Okay. I'm annoyed that you brought Shannon Entropy into this one as well, when it had no place here. Everything's Shannon. Yeah. Thank you, as always, for listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer. We've been here with Peter Coghill and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights. Until next time, goodbye.