In message , at 19:43:18 on Tue,
27 Oct 2009, Neil Williams remarked:
I've never heard that offered as an option for people caught on the
"wrong train" or with an "accidentally invalid"[1] ticket on an
'intercity' train.

Depends if you mean wrong time, or entirely wrong train (one that, for
instance, does not stop at the required destination). I've seen a few
cases of the latter, and in no case was any fare charged.

The ones I've seen most of are "accidentally invalid" tickets. Most
recent, and where the chap was indeed let off with a "don't do it again"
was buying a ticket with Family Railcard, then omitting to bring a child
along. Passenger claimed he didn't realise this was necessary.

Time before that was a lady using an Open ticket a day or to after
purchase. This used to be valid, and may be again; but this was during
the interval it wasn't. She left in no doubt that she was required to
'pay again', despite being quite distressed about it.

Meanwhile Leicester seems to be a hot-spot for "wrong train" advance
purchase tickets, to some extent because of the timetabling. There are
regular platform announcements about the peril of getting on the wrong
train. Although more recently the EMT train managers don't make nearly
so many on-train announcements about this.
--
Roland Perry