Other travel during the day had almost applied an off-peak cap to my card so I took the opportunity to investigate reports of problems, both current and future, at Finsbury Park. Before I outline the full story though, the important message here is that at the moment you do NOT need to touch out or in if interchanging between Underground and National Rail. In fact, if you try to touch out you will hit serious problems.
As usual I started my journey at Crayford.
I have just been made aware about an update to the OSI list dating back to last November. There is one new OSI between Cannon Street NR and Mansion House LU. Sadly there still isn’t an OSI between Cannon Street and Bank which is a much more popular route. The one they’ve added is only … Read more
In late October I was provided with a new list of OSIs which had come from the ATOC fare manual rather than my usual source at TfL. It looked like there were some useful new OSIs, including the long awaited Bank to Cannon Street interchange. Later I received my usual update from TfL which showed that the ATOC list was rather inaccurate with most of it’s changes.
I’ve recently become aware of an issue at some National Rail stations, e.g. Stratford, Barking. These are stations where people will often arrive from outside the Oyster area on a paper ticket and wish to continue using their Oystercard without visiting the gateline. These stations sometimes have yellow standalone readers which record either entry or exit, often with a sign telling PAYG users to touch in here. You might not want to do this.
I picked up this little gem on another website this week. If you have over run the maximum journey time by just a few minutes and you are at an out of station interchange then there might be a way out of the incomplete journey penalty. Thanks to Phil for allowing me to share his story:
Yesterday I discovered another little anomaly with the Oyster system. I ventured out with one of my kids on a circular route taking in the DLR and Overground. We touched in at Crayford and took the rounder service to Woolwich Arsenal. Then it was the DLR to Shadwell with the obligatory sitting in the front seat pretending to drive the train.
The possibility of proving two points in one trip proved too hard to resist today, so once again I ventured out on the trains. On the way back I exited via the Southern gateline at London Bridge and re-entered via the Southeastern gateline. This time the system correctly charged me just one journey, so it … Read more
A couple of weeks ago I had a surprising email from Transport for London. It told me that I was due a refund of £4 because of an ‘operational issue’. It said that the refund was ready to be picked up from London Bridge Underground station. This was just the start of a whole new discovery.
I’ve had a reply to my letter about breaking an OSI by using a bus. The person answering the letter has not understood what I was trying to say, so I’ve sent back an email reply explaining it in a different way. At least this letter has been answered, unlike the earlier ones concerning the … Read more
I’ve managed to break the oyster system again! I’ll admit that this time it was a deliberate attempt to try something out-of-the-ordinary, but not impossible. I was returning from Balham to Crayford and I changed at New Cross Gate to avoid using zone 1. It was raining, so rather than walk