Oddities at Lewisham National Rail

Lewisham has been a bit of a nightmare ever since they started trying to make it accessible, along with the addition of the DLR platforms. It’s come a long way since the only entrance was at the London end of platforms 2 and 3 and access to platforms 1 and 4 was via a subway … Read more

TfL Website Sign-in Issues

Is anyone else having problems signing into their accounts on the TfL website? Every time I try to log in I have to complete the wretched captcha puzzle at least twice and often three times. It’s not because I get the pictures wrong either. After the first attempt I’m redirected back to the “are you … Read more

No More Oyster at Ticket Offices

A few weeks ago I wrote about the removal of Oyster facilities at most NR ticket offices.  The last two remaining train companies were London Overground and TfL Rail, both concessions of TfL.  This week it has been confirmed that both of these will also lose their ticket office capabilities this month.  A Transport for … Read more

Contactless Caps on Fare Finder

I’m delighted to report that the fare finder now includes all-day and off-peak caps for stations where contactless only is accepted. In all cases the all-day cap is the same as the anytime day travelcard and the off-peak cap is the same as the off-peak day travelcard.  These caps only allow unlimited travel within zones … Read more

Latest Funding Settlement and Driverless Trains

There no longer seem to be direct links between fares or concessions and the ongoing funding settlements, unless I’m missing something, so I’m not going to delve too deeply into the topic.  The condition that seems to be producing all the headlines this time is “driverless trains”, a topic that means different things to different … Read more

Mysterious Invisible Pink Readers

I’ve finally been hit with the mystery invisible pink reader phenomenon.  On Monday I made the journey shown in the image.  The touch in at Waterloo mainline was definitely made at a gateline with a yellow reader attached, yet the journey history describes it as a pink reader. I wonder whether it might be connected … Read more

Introducing: Longer Reads

I’ve added a new section in the menu above called Longer Reads.  This is for articles which don’t really fit in the information pages but have a longer shelf life than latest news.  I’ll be adding more topics in the future, but the first one is a look at the cheap short-hop fares which cross … Read more

What to do about Vauxhall

Today the zone 1 boundary moved south to Kennington station and then along the Northern line to Elephant & Castle. This means that Kennington is now on the boundary between zones 1 and 2 rather than in zone 2 alone. The reason for this is because the new Northern line extension to Nine Elms and … Read more

Oyster Facilities at NR Ticket Offices

When Oyster was rolled out to National Rail services in 2010 there were a number of National Rail stations where ticket offices had facilities to retail Oyster products. This included selling travelcards, adding discount entitlement, printing journey histories and of course selling the Oyster cards and topping up credit. To do this a station had … Read more