Permit to travel

When football travel cost 5p - a trip down memory lane

The 1990s. British Rail was being run down ready for its carving up and selling off to the private sector. And for a group of young Bromley supporters it presented a golden opportunity for discount away travel.

Many of you will remember Connex and the Major government’s sterling efforts to turn much of South London’s rail network into a British version of the New York City subway of the early 80s. The slam door trains on the stopping services were being replaced by the driver-only-operated Networker trains that are still falling to bits and catching fire today, and stations were routinely left unstaffed. For us football-mad, cash-strapped teenagers, this meant that travelling to many away games became effectively free, or to be more precise – cost the princely sum of 5p. You could go miles by suburban train without seeing a single member of railway staff.

The running down of the local railways hailed the advent of the Permit To Travel machine. These machines were provided at stations to allow people to travel when the ticket office was closed. The minimum you could put in was 5p (when you didn’t have any 5p coins and had to put in a 10p, or god forbid, a 20p you felt like you’d been robbed). The idea was that when you got to your destination you'd show the staff the Permit To Travel and they'd charge you the difference between the fare and what you had paid. You were meant to put in as much change as you had on you but nobody did.

If you didn’t buy a Permit, you could be done for fare evasion – but with one you were untouchable. The reality was that it was very easy to get to your destination without anyone checking your ticket and therefore you could travel to many Bromley away games for just 5p. We saw it as a challenge and spent a lot of time planning convoluted routes that would maximise the 5p potential.

You couldn’t get a Permit from Bromley South because the booking office was usually open there. Shortlands, Bromley North, Hayes, Clock House and Bickley were all likely spots to be able to get one though.

We had bus passes for school so could easily get there, however if you got there and the ticket office was open the Permit machine had a red light on which renderered it unusable. Sometimes the booking clerk forgot to switch the permit machine off at a staffed station – finding this happy scenario was like winning the lotto!

On the other side of that coin, occasionally the station was left unstaffed but the permit machine hadn’t been switched on, which felt like was a kick in the balls. Then you’d be faced with the choice of blagging it or going to another station to try there. Many a time we walked from Shortlands to Ravensbourne for this reason.

The jewels in the Permit To Travel crown were Birkbeck and Ravensbourne. You were pretty much guaranteed to get one there. Birkbeck didn’t even have a booking office so the permit to travel machine was always available.

The trick to going a long way on a 5p permit was avoiding interchange stations with barriers. St Albans, Hendon and Borehamwood were all a direct train from the Bromley area and a guaranteed 5p day out all season. Anything south of the river on the suburban network could very easily be done with a few changes around places like Herne Hill, Clapham Junction or Crystal Palace. Penge West and Anerley were also key stations for accessing anything in Surrey or Sussex via Croydon for 5p.

Things got more complicated when you had to factor in the tube because unlike the main line, most of it was barriered and staffed. This is where Kings Cross Thameslink and Farringdon came into their own. You could access the Underground from the mainline platforms without passing through any barriers there, and so away games like Harrow Borough, Chesham, Dagenham and so on were easily achievable on a 5p permit.

Of course when we got to our destination there were often barriers in operation - but the process for Underground staff to exchange a British Rail permit to travel for a ticket was so convoluted and complicated that they never bothered. Not once. They just waved us through. Years later I worked briefly in a London Underground booking office (the worst job I’ve ever had) and I can confirm it was a massive pain in the arse. Nobody knew how to exchange them!

Things got more complicated for the likes of Stevenage and Cambridge, or anything out of other London terminals. This is where the King’s Cross Thameslink / Finsbury Park loophole came in.

You could access the Victoria line at Kings Cross and the mainline at Finsbury Park without passing through any barriers. Most mainline termini didn’t have barriers in those days so anything out of Liverpool Street or Fenchurch Street was walkable from London Bridge, which was also barrierless.

Its crazy really, the lengths we went to. You have to consider that a child travelcard was only about £1.50 at the time, but the saving was worth a couple of cans, ten fags or a bag of chips to us. My main source of income in those days was a News Shopper round. Those are the margins we were working to. Further afield matches like Bognor or Basingstoke usually involved travelling on a slam door train with a guard and there was no point in even attempting these with Permits. We saved up and bought tickets for those games.

Sometimes on a Tuesday night if there was a supporters coach we’d get a free lift home on that. On other occasions we used to get on the players coach. To say it wouldn’t happen now is an understatement.

I remember one occasion going to St Leonard’s in the FA Cup on the players coach on a Tuesday night. We stopped to pick up former players Dean Wordsworth and Frank Coles at The Crown on the A21 at Green Street Green.

Wordsworth got on the bus with a fag in his mouth, clutching two bottles of Bud and a McDonald’s bag. He greeted his team mates and the rest of the bus with a cheery “wotcha, you c**ts!”. George Wakeling didn’t bat an eyelid. As the years went by some of us learned to drive, we left school, got jobs and could afford normal train tickets. For our generation of Bromley supporters back in the 1990s though, the Permit To Travel machine was our friend and will always hold a special 5p-sized place in our hearts.

This article is intended as a nostalgic look back at a golden era a quarter of a century ago and is in no way meant to promote fare evasion. The railway companies have wised up considerably since then with regards to it. Its a criminal record job these days. We weren’t breaking the law because a 5p Permit was all you needed to board a train legally in the 90s.

I’m not sure when the Permit machines were phased out in South London. It was certainly after we were older and could afford to buy normal tickets. My guess would be around twenty years ago. Once in a blue moon you still see them at rural stations around the UK. The last time I saw one was in 2019 at Hatton in Warwickshire. Even though I had a ticket, I couldn’t walk past it. I just had to stick 5p in the slot and press the button for old times sake... The kids growing up in Hatton don’t know how lucky they are!

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