Hi John,

The main confusuon seems to be that when travelling to a dual zoned station it is treated as being in the zone relevant to where you’ve come from. In this case that is zone 2. Travelling in the afternoon peak with a railcard is one of the cases where Oyster isn’t always cheaper, especially if you don’t finish in zone 1.

The National Rail Enquiries site is definitely wrong on this. Whilst it’s good that they now seem to be defaulting to PAYG fares rather than paper ticket fares in the contactless area, they do need to get it right. I’d be interested to know what response you get from them.

As to being offered the cheaper discounted Anytime Return fare, that is simply not possible when using Oyster or contactless PAYG. If you had gone to the ticket office at Vauxhall then that is exactly what they would have sold you.

Sorry I don’t have better news, but you have been charged correctly.

Cheers Si,

As it’s not until next year I’ll park this here. Quite a bit to do with the phase 1b go-live later this month.

Hi Malcolm,

I also have a 60+ Oyster and I’ve never seen anything like a charge made to the credit card. However, whenever I use contactless I do get a 10p authorisation. This is replaced by the actual journey charge overnight, or a couple of days later if it’s an incomplete journey. I think it’s likely that your brother may have used his bank card at West Drayton instead of the 60+ card. I’ve done it myself a couple of times. I suggest he registers his bank card on his TfL account and then sees what history it shows. The helpdesk will refund the charge if one has been properly made. They don’t like doing it too many times though, as I found out the third time.

however if you purchase a ticket from Surbiton to Walton then the train must stop at Surbiton.

This bit isn’t actually true. The 60+ Oyster is a zonal and a season ticket so any additional ticket can be used without the train needing to call where you swap from one to the other.

Hi Alexander,

I think I’m getting what you are after. Starting from Reading, the fares to stations within the zones do follow a certain structure, but it is unique to Reading and I’m not about to create a grid for every contactless only station. The fares to Ealing Broadway [3], and Greenford [4] (via West Ealing [3]), are indeed the same.

The PAYG fares shown on brfares.com are not always correct. This is because it’s the rail industry database and not linked to the PAYG database run by Cubic on behalf of TfL. I can assure you that no fares heading out from zone 1 have ever been off-peak in the afternoon peak. This is because the PAYG fares are single only and the sum of two of them needs to match the Anytime return. Fares for paper tickets are completely different and off-peak fares between Paddington and Reading are indeed valid on Elizabeth line services in the afternoon peak. It should be noted that stations being added as part of Project Oval have had their restrictions changed for paper tickets so that they better match the PAYG structure. This may eventually happen on lines which already had contactless PAYG before Oval, especially if Oval extends the coverage further. We’ll have to wait and see.

Finally, some journeys are defined as being unlikely to be undertaken and so no fares are defined. This is true of Reading to Piccadilly line stations between Osterley and Heathrow inclusive. I imagine the expectation is that you’d use SWR to Hounslow or Syon Lane, or change at Hayes and Harlington for Heathrow. If you actually make the journey then you will be charged a fare, but it might be more than you’d expect.

Hi Barry,

Can you clarify what is wrong?

Digging a little further it seems that fares from the extension to Chiltern served stations only have a morning peak, but to any other stations they have both. Is that wrong? Should it be like GWR so any eastbound fares from the extension only have a morning peak?

It’s all there now.

Hi JG,

It is a bit vague, I agree. In fact it seems to be saying that you need to get a replacement card first and use it once to allow it to be registered. From what you’re saying you’ve ordered the card online which means it should be registered and have the travelcard and any PAYG credit already loaded.

I’d certainly keep records of any costs incurred and if they don’t mention it with the new card then call the helpline and enquire. My experience with replacement kids zip cards is that they’re usually quite quick, and those also include a photo which must add to the processing time.

Out of interest, did you have to pay for a new card online, or does the fact that it was an old damaged card mean that they waived the fee? In fact, did the old card have a deposit on it, and if yes, have the refunded that?

If your flight arrives at 2340 then you probably won’t get a connection to Shepherd’s Bush. The last one leaves Gatwick at 2302. You probably need to get to Victoria and hope you’ll get the last tube at about 0040.

Is it tonight, or a later Tuesday?

Just noticed I never came back to this. If you have a railcard then obviously you’ll get more off-peak journeys in zone 3 before it’s worthwhile getting the bigger travelcard. The thing to note, railcard or not, is that when making extension journeys using PAYG you will still be limited by the same zone 1 centered daily/weekly cap.

It really depends how much time you wish to spend on saving a small amount of money.

Yes, you benefitted from the Mayor’s off-peak Friday experiment which ran every Friday from 8th March to 31st May.

Hi Chris,

You probably won’t be surprised to know that several issues are combining here to make the system so complex.

First of all, retail systems understand a travelcard to originate at a station and end at zones 1-6. Beyond zones 1-6 you get out boundary travelcards which are valid for one return journey from the origin to the zone 6 boundary and unlimited travel within zones 1-6. From the point of view of rail services an out boundary travelcard is finished on exit at the origin station because it’s not valid the other way round (zones – origin – zones). If you want to do the other way round you need a boundary zone to origin return to use with a standard zones 1-6 travelcard. It should also be noted that a travelcard is still valid to use in zones 1-6 until 0430 the next morning, but you’ll need to pay separately (or use a TfL bus) to get back to the zones. So, when searching for fares between two stations, if the origin is outside zones 1-6 and the destination is inside you will get travelcards quoted, but not the other way around.

Next you get the problem of zones 7-9. This is originally a TfL concept which has been kludged onto the National Rail systems in a sub-optimal way. Any day travelcard from a zones 7-9 origin uses a special route code which says (also available at) AAA zones 7-9. This expands the out boundary validity to include unlimited travel in the extra zones. It’s still classed as an out boundary travelcard, hence the suggestion that you’ll only get one return from Amersham. To further complicate things there are out boundary travelcards from Watford Junction, Broxbourne, Rye House, St Margarets (Herts), Ware and Shenfield which also include unlimited travel in zones 1-9. They only allow one return journey to the zone 9 boundary, although some staff may believe that it’s the zone 6 boundary.

Then you get the Kent problem. Swanley is now pretty much standard because the old Swanley to zones 1-6 travelcard has been removed from the system. Initially it was slightly cheaper to get some versions of the out boundary travelcard to zones 1-6 which was obviously fine if you didn’t want any other parts of zones 7-9. It was also a regulated product which prevented it being removed at first.

Dartford has an even bigger issue. You can buy tickets, including travelcards, which are valid via Gravesend and onto HS1. This means that there are two versions of every ticket, one with a route code saying “Plus High Speed” and the other saying “Not valid on HS1”. This means that the “AAA zones 7-9” route code cannot be used. So whilst a travelcard which includes zone 8 is absolutely valid at Dartford, if Dartford is the origin station then it is not valid at any other zones 7-9 stations. I’m fairly confident that the retail staff at Dartford would sell you an appropriate ticket if you ask, but this is definitely an issue which ought to be addressed somehow.

I hope this clarifies things, but do ask a followup if you want.