I was going through my desk drawer at work the other day and found a heap of old cityrail train tickets. Then I started to wonder what exactly is on the magnetic stripes in these tickets. So i got a cheap magnetic card reader from eBay and found that it contains 2 tracks of data. I’ve included 3 examples below…

Example 1
Track 1: B00DF10003AF4012B551F37AADECC4C990BB8552A21CC008CB
Track 2: B00DF10003AF4012B551F37AADECC4C990BB8552A21CC008CB
Expires: 2010-06-27 (Weekly Ticket)
Destinations: Sutherland -> North Sydney
Numbers on back: 21JE 1826113815
Bottom Corner: BN-01-10-INGFEDCBA987654321

Example 2
Track 1: B0364ABBB814FBA90EE2C07AADECC4C990BB8552A21CC008CB
Track 2: B0364ABBB814FBA90EE2C07AADECC4C990BB8552A21CC008CB
Expires: 2010-07-04 (Weekly Ticket)
Destinations: Sutherland -> North Sydney
Numbers on back: 28JE 1948076713
Bottom Corner: M0903589

Example 3
Track 1: B06A867774D4489A3DD1F3D007466E6333FF588B3B1CC008CB
Track 2: B06A867774D4489A3DD1F3D007466E6333FF588B3B1CC008CB
Expires: 2010-07-11 (Weekly Ticket)
Destinations: Sutherland -> North Sydney
Numbers on back: 05JL 1940877977
Bottom Corner: M0904821

If you read the ticket before and also after its swiped through the gate, it appears the data on the tracks does not change. Not sure what any of this means at the moment, but looking at the last half of the tracks on the cards i saw, it seems like these may be the stations i travel to and from? All 3 cards seem to have “CC008CB” in common. I’m also curious to see if it’s possible to clone the data of one card to another and use it through the gates.

Has anyone experimented with this or decoded what the data is or how it works? Possibly even how to manipulate the data into creating a valid ticket?