On 23 May, 13:30, Chris wrote:
On 23 May, 13:12, wrote:

You may find that cheap AP tickets e.g. Reading to Gatwick by AXC and
Gatwick to *Swindon* [1] by FGW are available at quieter times of the
day.

[1] Breaking the rules on ending short.- Hide quoted text -

Which is quite difficult at Reading as the barriers would refuse your
ticket & the grippers, quite rightly, would tell you that the ticket
is invalid to Reading & charge you again, plus Penalty Fare. Silly
idea, really.

Barriers at Reading are turned off at 9pm Sunday to Thursday - also
I'm not sure that the barriers are necessarily set to reject AP
tickets ending short and besides the barrier staff let people through
the manual gates on being shown a ticket with only a glance.

I'd personally far rather see the barriers turned on at all times when
trains run and keep use of the manual gate for very exceptional
circumstances only but that's not the way things are.