On Thu, 3 Jun 2004 17:46:56 +0100, "Graham J"
wrote:

and you can buy them in advance (up to 4 days IIRC) so you can hop on a
bus close to home and avoid the queueueueueues at the ticket office.

It is seven days for the one-day and weekend cards. The four days is for
the period travelcards on paper tickets (you can charge an Oystercard a
month in advance).

My local railway station would never sell off-peak travelcards until
approximately 9:25am on the day of travel (i.e. after the last timetabled
departure before 9:30am) and the ticket machines also wouldn't offer them
until quite near 9:30am. I assumed this was a widespread policy and was
blissfully unaware till this year that you *could* buy them in advance
elsewhere.

It sounds odd, but whilst you *can* buy that up to seven days in
advance from NR stations, you can't buy them *on the day* before the
departure of the last restricted service!

At least that's the rule, a lot of ticket offices sell them anyway and
stamp them 'not valid until 0930' or whatever the restriction is from
their station.