Oyster and Railcard caps

Hi Joana,

You don’t say where your final destinations are, so it’s difficult to give tailored advice. However, if you use an Oyster card to PAYG then definitely add your railcard to it. You will get cheaper off-peak fares, and even though you’ll pay full price in the evening peak on weekdays, the discounted off-peak cap will limit the effect of that. You can’t at the moment get railcard fares when using contactless on bank cards or mobiles.

Depending on where you need to go to, Hendon could be a very good place to switch as it’s on the boundary between zones 3 and 4. You will need to get off the train and use your ticket from St Albans to exit, then use your Oyster card to enter again. Let me know the places you end up in and I’ll see what specifically I can suggest to keep the costs down. If you can give rough times of journeys involved too (both to and from work) then it’s even better.

Hi Joana,

Thank you for those details. I think I can help quite a bit. I hope I’m right to assume that you have either a 16-25 railcard or a 26-30 railcard? If not please let me know because it may change some of this.

So, firstly for Wembley Park I recommend travelling from St Albans to Hendon on Thameslink, then get out and take bus 83 towards Wembley Park station. The bus takes around 20 minutes but easily beats the train doing Hendon – West Hampstead – Wembley Park which is a lengthy double back. It’s even worse if you go to St Pancras. A railcard discounted off-peak day return from St Albans to Hendon is £7.10, plus £1.75 x2 for the bus – total £10.60.

For Southfields there are some options depending on how long you want the journey to take. The fastest way is St Albans to Blackfriars on Thameslink and District to Southfields from there. That’s £18.10 for Thameslink plus £3.80 peak single and £2.05 discounted off-peak single for the District – total £23.95.

Splitting at Hendon requires taking the stopping trains and potentially waiting 15 minutes at Hendon for the next train after you’ve touched the Oyster card in (or out on the way back). You’d then need the Anytime day return from St Albans to Hendon which is £12.75, plus £6.60 peak single and £3.55 discounted off-peak single for Hendon to Southfields via Blackfriars – total £22.90.

For a bigger saving you’ll need to take 4 trains. St Albans to Hendon, Hendon to West Hampstead Thameslink, West Hampstead (Overground) to West Brompton and West Brompton to Southfields. That will be £12.75 as above, plus £3.60 peak single and £1.95 discounted off-peak single for the other three trains combined – total £18.30.

Now for the long day. Start with whatever is your preferred journey to Southfields. Once you finish there take the District to West Brompton, Overground to West Hampstead and Jubilee from West Hampstead (Underground) to Wembley Park. It’s not as bad as it sounds and costs just £1.45 discounted off-peak single. Then it’s the bus to Hendon and use whichever return ticket you bought in the morning to get back to St Albans. It doesn’t matter if the ticket was to Blackfriars, you can still use it only for the Hendon to St Albans part in the evening.

So £18.10 + £3.80 + £1.45 + £1.75 = £25.10 to go fast to Blackfriars,
or £12.75 + £6.60 + £1.45 + £1.75 = £22.55 to split at Hendon and via Blackfriars,
or £12.75 + £3.60 + £1.45 + £1.75 = £19.55 via Hendon, West Hampstead and West Brompton.

Finally for Saturday it’s off-peak all day, plus you can buy cheaper super off-peak returns from St Albans which are only valid at weekends. St Albans to Hendon is £5.90 day return while to Blackfriars it’s £8.15.

So £8.15 + £2.05 x2 = £12.25 fast via Blackfriars,
or £5.90 + £3.55 x2 = £13.00 split at Hendon via Blackfriars (NOT WORTH IT),
or £5.90 + £1.95 x2 = £9.80 via Hendon, West Hampstead and West Brompton.

Other things to note. The tickets from St Albans are all railcard discounted. Everything else is on Oyster and is disounted off-peak but not peak or for the bus. I assume you return from Southfields outside the evening peak 1600-1900. The three stations at West Hampstead are very close together taking no more than 5 minutes to walk between any two. If you change at West Brompton you MUST touch the pink reader in the passage way between the Overground platforms and the District line platforms.

I think I’ve covered everything, but do come back if you have any questions.

Hi Joana,

They’re not silly questions, there was a lot to get in and I wasn’t sure if I’d made it clear enough.

To explain the Oyster a bit more. Yes, all Oyster journeys are single like you’ve been doing on the tube. You touch in at the start of the journey and out at the end. Oyster also has this clever feature where it will join together journey legs where you have to leave one station and walk to another nearby. So for Hendon to Southfields you touch in at Hendon, touch out at West Hampstead Thameslink, walk to West Hampstead Overground and touch in again, touch the pink reader within West Brompton to say you’ve avoided zone 1 and touch out at Southfields. Providing you don’t take longer than 20 minutes between touching out and back in again at West Hampstead it will join the two journeys together and charge the fares I said for the whole journey from Hendon to Southfields. There is a map here showing West Hampstead and how close all the stations are.

Now, normally you would find that buying two tickets is more expensive, as indeed you see with St Albans to Hendon and Hendon to West Hampstead versus St Albans to West Hampstead. The reason it works here is that on Oyster you only pay for the zones you travel through once, so Hendon to Southfields is zone 3-2-1-2-3 (or 3-2-3 if you avoid zone 1). This isn’t always true for paper tickets from outside the zones (eg St Albans). Also, as I said earlier, Hendon is on the boundary between zones 3 and 4, so your paper ticket ends in zone 4 and you start using Oyster in zone 3.

Where your first journey is in the morning peak I’ve quoted the undiscounted peak fare and assuming you start travelling back before 1600 you’ll get the off-peak discounted fare for the way home. So you don’t have to double anything unless I’ve done it by saying x2.

So your weekly total IF you always AVOID zone 1 should look like this:

Afternoon in Wembley Park: 2x £10.60 = £21.20
Morning in Southfields: 2x £18.30 = £36.60
All day in both places: 1x £19.55
Saturday in Southfields: 1x £9.80
TOTAL £77.35 (M-F) or £87.15 (inc Sat)

Now, I do have to make a small confession. If you want to go via Blackfriars there is a different ticket you can buy which I’d forgotten about. It’s St Albans to “ZONE U123* LONDN” which costs £22.00 with your railcard. It allows you to travel fast into London and then make 1 return journey on the Underground in zones 1-3. It’s a bit cheaper because you don’t end up paying full single fares on Oyster in the morning. There is an avoiding zone 1 option to “ZONE U23* LONDN” but that costs £20.00 which you can beat with Oyster. There also isn’t a super off-peak version of this ticket, so Saturdays is better off with Oyster. For the long day the fact you’d still have to pay to get from Southfields to Wembley Park and the bus makes it more expensive than using Oyster.

I realise there is a hell of a lot to consider here, and maybe some of the Southfields days you’d prefer the fast train to London and only one ticket, even though it costs a bit more. Hopefully the Wembley Park days will be a big saving using the bus.

• This reply was modified 3 days, 10 hours ago by Mike (admin). Reason: correct map link