A lad aged 13 years and 6 months, who is over 6 feet tall, is refused an "under 16" ticket on the grounds of size, and charged the full adult fare.
In order to escape from the platform at the destination station he has to feed the full-fare ticket into the automatic barrier machine. He then goes to prove his age and claim back the extra fare. He is asked for his ticket as proof that he has travelled. He explains that the ticket is contained in the ticket-gobbling machine. The station staff are not interested in looking for it....
In order to prevent a repetition, it is decided to ask the train company (SWT) what identification they might accept as proof of age. Accordingly, the telephone number for SWT is looked up in the local BT directory which gives the National Rail enquiries number 08457 484950. Phoning this number gave a nice YL somewhere (probably) in the Indian subcontinent who recognised the words "South West Trains" and gave the number 08456 000650 for their customer service department.
The helpful person at SWT sympathised with the problem and suggested acquiring a "SWT photocard" which he said could easily be done by taking two passport sized personal photos of the youngster to any major station on the SWT network and filling in a form. He also suggested "carrying a form of identity with a picture on it, perhaps a passport or something with the National Insurance number on it". When asked if a photocopy would suffice, he was unsure but thought probably not. When asked whether he thought carrying a passport to school every day was a good idea, he could see there was a security issue.
Accordingly, the local train station was asked to provide a photocard. The person on the desk was quite adamant that there was "no such thing".
A day later, the ticket inspector on the station barrier was presented with the problem, and apologised profusely for the over-charging episode and suggested that proof of identity could be in the form of "A photocard". When asked where one obtains such a thing, he said "I really don't know".
Back at home, http://www.google.com/ was searched for the words SWT photocard. It provided a great many hits with this string in it, following the word "requires" as in "requires SWT photocard". But nowhere was there an indication of how one acquires one of these things. Still using the www resources, http://www.ask.com/ at Ask Jeeves was presented with the problem "how do I get a SWT photocard?" with inconclusive results that were of no use.
The saga continues....
Meanwhile, the travel centre at the local SWT station was closed on the Saturday afternoon due to "staff shortages" and the ticket office at the next station down the line was boarded up and unattended. The queue at the local station ticket office was at least 30 people deep. On the other hand, when one finds a human on the railway, they are (on the whole) reasonably sympathetic and helpful even if under the rules they can't actually help.