Hi John,

You’ve spotted an error in my stations data. They have changed the internal code for Custom House EL station. I’ve just fixed it. Thank you for pointing it out.

My recommendation for the journey is Overground from Clapham Junction to Whitechapel, touch the pink reader, then Elizabeth line to Custom House. Fares £2.30/£2.10.

• This reply was modified 3 months, 1 week ago by Mike.

Thanks for that, Michael. It may have been fixed now. I did try checking out some other variations and decided that it may have been a faulty validator. I ran out of time to check each one on that platform and couldn’t get back to it.

Hi Joel,

It would be a zone 1 fare, £2.90 at peak times and £1.85 with your railcard discount when off-peak.

I can confirm that it is quite deliberate that they aren’t explaining how it is done.

Hi Antony,

Yellow readers are positioned at some key points within Stratford, but it can be easy to miss them if you’re not sure. There are a couple at each end of the platforms shared between Central line and Elizabeth line trains. There are also some on the way to the Pudding Mill Lane DLR platforms, and there’s one in the Jubilee line concourse against the wall.

At Tottenham Hale you would need to exit and re-enter, although most people doing that will be switching to the Underground and you have to go through both gatelines to do that anyway. Farringdon has validators at various points between the Thameslink and Underground platforms, as well as a couple near the top of the escalators down to the Elizabeth line. Finally, at Finsbury Park there are several validators in one of the subways under the NR platforms. I think it’s the higher one, but I may be wrong.

Hi,

I did take a look at this at the time. I quite like the concept, but I am a bit nervous about storing the fares from a point in time without knowing whether they have been updated. Have you run updates against the fares changes made on June 8th, and the emergency corrections from June 29th?

The journey I checked was Oxford Circus to Southend Central where both fares are wrong on your app.

I think you were probably very lucky in that case. The avoiding zone 1 fare is £6.25 and a similar zone 3 fare using Underground as well is £6.10. When you write again, maybe just comment on what the fare finder says and don’t mention your recent experience. Just say that travelling via Leyton and Harringay avoids both zone 1 and 2 and should therefore be cheaper than the other alternative fares.

Thanks. Whilst true, in this case the prices from Knockholt and Bounadry zone 6 are the same. Unless there was a reasonable expectation of using a different route in one direction, I’d stick just to the point to point fare. The alternative routes would require changes of train and take much longer, either via Swanley or Redhill.

Box Hill & Westhumble is outside the current PAYG area so you cannot just touch in and out again. You need to buy a ticket for the day. Vauxhall has a ticket office, or there are ticket machines there, or you could use an online website.

Hi railer,

Yes, contactless looks at the touches for the whole journey and compares them to the available fares. It ignores any interchanges which aren’t programmed as alternative fares. As there is only one fare between the pair of stations, that is what will be charged.

Oyster, on the other hand, charges the fare for the journey so far at any touch out. When you touch back in again it restarts the journey, but it won’t refund anything already charged. If it’s an undiscounted adult Oyster card then the back office will queue a refund to be picked up from the next day, but this is yet to be implimented for discounts or zip cards etc.

My understanding is that the platform validators were changed from yellow to pink shortly before the Elizabeth line opened west of Paddington into the core. I believe that they were on the London bound EL platform near to the access to the Underground platforms. The fare finder still mentions them if you ask for a fare like Hayes and Harlington to Queens Park. I haven’t been there for a while though.

Thanks for the update, Vincent. I actually sent my own query to GA on the basis that I also have a 60+ Oyster card. The initial response claimed that customer relations didn’t have enough information because the 60+ isn’t a GA product. The advisor said they’d forwarded my query to a manager. Let’s hope I get the right response next time.

<Sigh>

If you were using the 60+ Oyster to travel to Shenfield on a Greater Anglia service and didn’t have any other ticket then they would be correct (unless the train called at Romford). But the 60+ Oyster, like the London Freedom Pass, is an off-peak zone 1-6 travelcard and the usual rules apply about combining with other tickets. As long as you have a ticket valid from the boundary of zone 6 then you are absolutely fine.

I suggest you write again stating that:

• You know that the 60+ Oyster cannot be used on its own to Shenfield
• You are sure that if a Greater Anglia train called at Romford that it would be valid to use all the way to Romford on a Greater Anglia service (cite the xx23 and xx53 departures from Liverpool Street on a Sunday).
• You are also certain that when combined with another ticket valid from the boundary of zone 6, the 60+ Oyster is as valid as a London Travelcard providing that travel is not before 0930 on weekdays.