Mike (admin)

Just as I’m preparing updates to include the 50 new stations in the Project Oval PAYG rollout, Greater Anglia has announced that it’s extensions to Stansted Airport, Witham and Southend Victoria have been deferred until Summer 2026.  The Chiltern extensions to Aylesbury Vale Parkway, and Thameslink/Southern/Great Northern extensions to Harlington, Baldock, Dorking, Reigate and East … Read more

This also probably applies to the other stations between Reading and Iver, plus the branches for Henley, Marlow and Windsor as well. First the bad news.  The off-peak cap from Reading when using PAYG appears to have risen by £1 to £35.40 from September 7th.  We know that GWR increased the prices of off-peak day … Read more

If you’ve read the text underneath the fare finder results then you’ll know that I put quite a lot of effort into improving the useability of the tool compared to the single fare finder on the TfL website. Most of the improvements involve additional data (zonal coverage and time allowed) or tweaks to the station … Read more

UPDATE 4th September: The issue is now fixed and NRE no longer suggests contactless fares are available. The National Rail Enquiries journey planner has started suggesting that contactless PAYG will be available for travel to Stansted Airport from this Sunday (September 7th). The fares appear for stations on the line between Liverpool Street and Stansted … Read more

In February this year c2c became the first National Rail operator (not including TfL) to accept contactless payments throughout it’s entire network. Shortly after being taken back into public ownership the company announced that there had been over 1 million taps (touches in or out) at their new stations in just under 6 months of … Read more

This is a followup article to https://oysterfares.com/walthamstow-central-overcharging-from-some-stations/.  It turns out that asking questions about complicated issues in August is a bad idea, as key people go on holiday at different times. I did eventually get a response from the Rail Delivery Group: “In the TfL PAYG system, all flows need a “no intermediate clicks” route … Read more

I’ve recently come across a video on Youtube by creator Nick Badley where he attempted to visit every station in zones 7-9 on the rail and tube map, plus a couple of other weird ones.  The weird ones are, of course, Cuffley and Epsom, and Nick correctly explains that the reason they’re not shown officially … Read more

*** Note: This article only refers to fares from certain stations beyond zones 1-9. Oyster is NOT affected *** Thanks to a visitor to the Rail Forums website, a quite serious problem with fares to and from Walthamstow Central has been uncovered. Until last year the fares from anywhere accepting PAYG to Walthamstow Central were … Read more

TfL have just announced that the price of Oyster photocards is rising from this Tuesday, July 22nd. This is the first increase in price for ten years, and in most cases it’s just £1. Zip card for 5-10 year olds: was £10, will now be £11. Zip card for 11-15 year olds: was £15, will … Read more