Right, that’s interesting.

Firstly, Kerry: National Rail smartcards which contain a travelcard allow travel within the zones without a separate Oyster card. I didn’t realise that they also provided journey history, which is good to know. The GTR version of the Key also allows PAYG travel on GTR services AFAIK, though I’m not sure how that is worked. If they rely on a data feed from TfL there might be issues.

Y’ossi: Given that you have a travelcard covering all of zones 1-6 I think touching pink readers is a little superfluous. If you truly were ending a journey at a station with one you’d need to exit via a gate. The issue we usually get is where a person has a ticket from say Brighton to Clapham Junction and wants to go onwards using Oyster PAYG without leaving the station. I have never seen a pink reader display Exit so I’m slightly skeptical that one would. Usually they display valid for interchange if using Oyster and touched in, or Enter if not touched in. With contactless they just say card accepted. I will follow this up though, so thank you for bringing it to my attention.

Hi Adam,

In answer to question 1, it won’t retrospectively discount the initial journey, but it will lower the off-peak cap for that day which the initial journey will count towards as long as it started after 0930.

As for question 2, it depends. As far as I know railcards do not actually have a start date. I also don’t know how quickly they’ll send out the railcard. If it’s a 1-year railcard then I’d get the discount added when you first travel to somewhere that can do it. If it’s a 3-year railcard there is another annoying consideration. The TfL system will allow the expiry date to be exactly 3 years from the date the discount is added, but railcards issued by post have an extra 5 days added to account for a slow postal delivery. If you take the railcard to be added on the day you receive it the system won’t allow them to put in the real expiry date. What they usually do is record the expiry as two years hence, then you have to get that updated at some point after the extra days have finished.

Hi Kevin,

Yes, that looks like a good plan, particularly if you plan to make other trips at weekends etc. Travel beyond zone 3 would come from PAYG as you say, and yes you can add a railcard, or get the gold card discount applied to reduce those off-peak fares.

You might also want to check out a cheaper option. Clapham High Street – Denmark Hill – Lewisham – Woolwich Dockyard only takes 45-55 minutes but means you only need zones 2-3 for your travelcard.

Cheers Nick.

They’re not quite right about the notional fare always being cheaper though.

That’s an interesting response. Let us know what happens.

Thanks Martin,

A sad day. I’ll see if I can get some more info.

Hi Chris,

Has it got auto topup set? If yes, then it’s likely that collection of the last topup failed from your bank. Otherwise the most likely reason is a card or reader fault.

No, you’re not missing anything. Adding a railcard discount to a 60+ Oyster is pointless.

You will need to buy a normal adult Oyster and get the railcard discount added to that.

As a final note, whilst brfares.com is brilliant for finding fares for the National Rail network, the Oyster and CPAY fare info is not always correct. This is not the fault of brfares. There is no direct link between the data used by brfares and the TfL database which means that the fares can sometimes be wrong. There are also a lot of missing fares.

I haven’t used an Oyster card which generates statements for a while, but I’ve just tried to set my current card up and the stupid website kept chucking me off.

Hi Andyboy,

Immediate same station exit doesn’t work at validators, only gates. With validators you need to wait until 2 minutes has passed at which point the cheapest single fare from that station will be charged. However, if the station is within the zones covered by your travelcard then there is no penalty for not touching out, you can just leave the touch in there. Finally, if the reason for not travelling was disruption or no service then the helpdesk will refund the entry charge if one had been made.

They indicate if you’ve gone via a particular route and are eligible for a different fare. They are generally only needed if you don’t need to change from one station to another (eg NR-LU).

Hi,

Yes you can buy tickets from West Drayton, though beware that they also offer fares via London which you obviously don’t want. You will be able to book a seat from Paddington, but you’ll probably need to do that at a station once you have the tickets.