I am trying to buy a train ticket for a journey between East Croydon and Overton today. This is a simple journey, changing at Clapham Junction and Basingstoke. However, it ended up to be a hunt between different websites because the ticket didn’t show up on my preferred split ticket retailer. The itinerary was shown but it forced me to buy 3 tickets, one for each leg, to complete the journey. I then checked the website of the train operator,…
I have been using KeyGo for a while to travel between London, Croydon and Brighton. It is a product developed by Govia Thameslink Railway to be loaded onto a The Key smartcard which enables account-based ticketing so that I don’t need to buy a ticket beforehand. In the past, it always charged me correctly, but recently I am getting more troubles than the effort saved. In the last week, I had to contact the customer service twice because of suspected…
On 30 December 2025, I did the “Christmas Parks Challenge”, which is an annual challenge of visiting all the park stations on the London Underground network, 24 parks in total. The rules of the challenge are follows: Before doing this challenge, the only kind of transport challenge I had done was the Random 15 challenge, in which I am a regular participant. It is a challenge where everyone departs together in form of a mass start, and the stations to…
National Rail will change the rules for train ticket refunds for tickets purchased on or after 1 April 2026, which will result in a loss of refundability on flexible tickets on or after the validity start. The change Under the current rules, an unused flexible ticket (Anytime, Off-Peak or Super Off-Peak) can be refunded up to 28 days after its validity ends, subject to an administration fee of at most £5. If the ticket is partially used, the difference between…
Update 3 March: the contactless expansion will be introduced on 8 March. Due to how the fares are set up, as explained in this article, significant split ticketing opportunities are available to undercut the through fare or contactless fare between Stansted Airport and the city. Most Stansted Express trains call at Bishops Stortford which can be used as a split point, apart from a few early morning / late night trains. You are advised to buy e-tickets immediately before travel…
A high profile class-action lawsuit, the Boundary Fares claim, has been dismissed by the court. The class representative alleged that Southeastern, Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR, trading as Southern, Thameslink, Gatwick Express and Great Northern) and SWR had an abuse of dominance position by failing to make Boundary Fares sufficiently available and/or to take reasonable steps to make customers purchasing tickets aware of Boundary Fares. The case was decided against the claimant’s favour, but it highlighted a few key points for…
The beginning – simple, zone-based fares When the Oyster Card was rolled out in London, it was designed to always give the best value fares. Oyster cards can operate in two ways – as a holder for Travelcards, or as a holder for PAYG credits. A Travelcard is a prepaid ticket, valid on most public transport in London, including National Rail services. Without a Travelcard valid for the journey, PAYG credits are deducted for travel instead. When used in PAYG…
In London, although National Rail and London Underground are separate transport networks, it is possible to buy a ticket for travel for single or return journeys on the other network, including tickets for journeys involving both networks. If your journey starts at a National Rail station outside the London fare zones 1-6 and ends at an Underground station (or vice versa), it is usually (but not always) cheaper to buy a ticket for the National Rail portion and use Oyster…
In an ideal world, if you want to travel by train from A to B to C back to A, you can buy a ticket from A to B, then B to C, then C to A. However, by doing so in Great Britain, more often than not you will pay much more than people doing return journeys, A-B-A-C-A despite that the distance is much shorter. This is because of a historical artifact which effectively penalising off-peak single journeys. In…
Contacting customer service about the use of a valid ticket combination results the combination becoming invalid.