A British railway company has shut down a “golden ticket generator” that temporarily gave customers free travel as part of a botched software upgrade. The error saw passengers with digital seat reservations – which are free and can be secured without buying a ticket – to board Great Western Railway (GWR) trains across the country. The QR code reservations, which are intended to ensure customers get seats on long-haul journeys, were accepted by automatic barriers as if they were actual tickets.

The mix-up also temporarily caused tens of thousands of people’s pre-booked tickets to disappear from GWR’s website, The Telegraph reports. A journalist at the outlet was able to travel 500 miles across the country using the “golden tickets”, spanning different rail services between London and Cornwall, despite also holding genuine tickets.

The issue was caused by a “coding error” on February 24 when the railway firm switched to a new ticket software called SilverRail.

An anonymous train guard told The Telegraph that ticket scanners identified the reservations as anytime singles, which are generally accepted by staff.

They added: “It does not show anything untoward … the only way a train crew member would spot it is a reservation and not a ticket is if they manually stop and check the ‘ticket’.”

GWR reportedly only became aware of the issue around a week ago, and as of March 11, the loophole is believed to have been patched.

A SilverRail spokesperson said: “This was the result of a coding error and GWR are disabling this loophole imminently. This is a top priority for SilverRail to correct the underlying error.”

A Great Western Railway spokesperson said: “We wrote to all account holders ahead of the system change to explain how they could retain historic transaction records, and over 1.6 million customers have successfully moved across in recent weeks.

“Tickets purchased through GWR.com are also automatically emailed to customers at the time of purchase.

“Customers who may have missed those emails can contact our online support team, who will be happy to guide them through how to retrieve them.

“We are also aware of a separate issue where some station gatelines were accepting seat reservations as valid for entry. Reservations are not valid travel documents, and anyone travelling without a valid ticket is committing a criminal offence.”