In article . com,
Mizter T wrote:
Can anyone name any other NR TOCs that issue Oyster?

At a guess, c2c at Barking & WAGN (or whoever it is) at Walthamstow Central.

I'll take a sidestep and find out.

--
Mike Bristow - really a very good driver

Mike Bristow wrote:
In article . com,
Mizter T wrote:

Can anyone name any other NR TOCs that issue Oyster?


At a guess, c2c at Barking & WAGN (or whoever it is) at Walthamstow Central.

I'll take a sidestep and find out.


Half the windows are usually shut and half of them say "no oyster here",
the LUL office is always closed, half the NR ticket machines are out of
order quite often, and there is no LUL fast ticket machine.

It's really not much fun getting tickets at Walthamstow.

If only they would just put one of those little Fast Ticket machines
downstairs...

Dave Newt wrote:
Mike Bristow wrote:
In article . com,
Mizter T wrote:

Can anyone name any other NR TOCs that issue Oyster?


At a guess, c2c at Barking & WAGN (or whoever it is) at Walthamstow Central.

I'll take a sidestep and find out.


Half the windows are usually shut and half of them say "no oyster here",
the LUL office is always closed, half the NR ticket machines are out of
order quite often, and there is no LUL fast ticket machine.

It's really not much fun getting tickets at Walthamstow.

If only they would just put one of those little Fast Ticket machines
downstairs...

That sounds like a poor situation. I can only suggest you use Oyster
Pre Pay if you wish to use the Tube, and add credit to your card at a
local newsagent. Again, if you need a season Travelcard then a
newsagent will do the job, ditto for Day Travelcards.

Plus it's worth noting you can also use Oyster Pre Pay on NR between
Liverpool Street and Walthamstow Central/ Tottenham Hale/ Seven
Sisters, but not at intermediate stations.

Price wise Pre Pay is cheaper for a single journey - £2.50 (or £2.00
after 7pm and at weekends) as opposed to £2.80 for a printed single
ticket. However printed CDR's and standard returns (for travel before
9.30am) cost £3.30 and £4.70 respectively (whilst an Oyster return
would cost £5.00 or £4.00), thus a printed ticket will always work
out cheaper for a straightforward return journey. However if you're
using the Tube for onward journeys from Liverpool Street then Oyster
Pre Pay capping will kick in, so it's could be quite useful after all.


Anyway there's a few ideas for avoiding the ticket offices/ machines at
Walthamstow, but I'm not making excuses for anyone - a busy station
such as Walthamstow really should be well equipped and competent enough
to sell tickets!

A question - do *any* of the NR ticket windows at Walthamstow deal with
Oyster?

"TKD" wrote in message
...

I think the main reason is that some people live in zone 2 north - say
Kentish Town - but work in zone 2 on the other side of zone 1 - say
Canary
Wharf. By buying a zone 2 paper weekly they hope to avoid the fare for
zone
1 every day, which with Oyster they can't do;

They can't do it with paper tickets, eitherm when the Revinue Protection
crowd get ahold of them.

(Unless they - say - use the NLL to avoid zone 1 properly, but then
the oyster card won't charge them)

On the day prepay launched enough people with season tickets accrued
negative balances for the media to report it as a bug.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/3422051.stm

There was of course no bug. All of those people did not have zone 1 on
their
travelcards and for the first time the system was able to catch them out.

That is why many people went back to paper tickets.

On the day prepay launched enough people with season tickets accrued
negative balances for the media to report it as a bug.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/3422051.stm

There was of course no bug. All of those people did not have zone 1 on their
travelcards and for the first time the system was able to catch them out.

How interesting. I'd heard those reports and kind of dismissed them as
rubbish journalism stirred up by the Lib Dem candidate for Mayor, Simon
Hughes, who never missed a chance for a dig at the Mayor Ken and didn't
let such trivial things as facts get in the way!

That's fascinating to hear the real reason behind the 'Oyster bugs' was
the system working properly (and catching people out) rather than a
system problem. It's not called a smartcard for no reason at all! Is
your information from an authoritative source?

I think it was on the TfL/GLAwebsite but I can't be sure and can't find from
a quick Google. Prepay was launched Jan '04 so it was around that time.

It seems Simon Hughes can only get his name about by claiming that anything
he doesn't understand is "scandal".

Mizter T wrote:
Dave Newt wrote:


Half the windows are usually shut and half of them say "no oyster here",
the LUL office is always closed, half the NR ticket machines are out of
order quite often, and there is no LUL fast ticket machine.

It's really not much fun getting tickets at Walthamstow.

If only they would just put one of those little Fast Ticket machines
downstairs...


That sounds like a poor situation. I can only suggest you use Oyster
Pre Pay if you wish to use the Tube, and add credit to your card at a
local newsagent. Again, if you need a season Travelcard then a
newsagent will do the job, ditto for Day Travelcards.

I have Oyster season anyway, and I just refill it at the work end of my
journey rather than the home end.


Anyway there's a few ideas for avoiding the ticket offices/ machines at
Walthamstow, but I'm not making excuses for anyone - a busy station
such as Walthamstow really should be well equipped and competent enough
to sell tickets!

A question - do *any* of the NR ticket windows at Walthamstow deal with
Oyster?

I was deliberately vague above - I know that the two windows on the
Liverpool Street platform there DON'T. The windows on the Chingford
side, I don't remember (I'm thinking they must do for the original claim
to be true!), but I'll have a look and see (or someone here will know,
I'm sure).

TKD wrote:
"Londoncityslicker" wrote in message
oups.com...

There are a number of NR stations with no gates at all, so no oyster
readers there.


To be absolutely clear that should have read:

"All NR stations in Zones 1-6 that already had gates had oyster pads fitted"

I would say that the majority of NR stations outside zone 2 don't have
readers!

I am presuming this means those stations that are not double LUL/NR stations.
The stations at the end of the Bakerloo Line that I've visited recently have
readers mounted on the walls (not always in a convenient or noticeable place)
because as there are no gates there are no Oyster pads on the nonexistent
gates.

I see no reason why all the NR stations can't just have an Oyster pad on the
wall or a supporting column. NR is just afraid of innovation.
--
Chris Hansen | chrishansenhome at btinternet dot com
|http://www.hansenhome.demon.co.uk or
|http://www.livejournal.com/users/chrishansenhome/

asdf wrote:
On 25 Aug 2005 03:24:34 -0700, "Paul" wrote:

On NR you can get discounts on season ticket renewals if the train
company you buy the ticket from performs badly. (You don't have to
actually use it on their trains to receive the discount.)

Exactly. Which is why there is no incentive for me to get an Oyster
travelcard!

South West Trains (don't know about other TOCs) now give the discount
on Oyster travelcards, provided you buy it from them.

Didn't know that. I doubt my little local station handles Oyster
though.. and I doubt you can topup on SWTs website, but I will check.

Incidentally, which are the best (i.e. worst performing!) train
companies to buy Travelcard seasons from?

SWT gives me a 5% discount. SE trains (previously Connex) used to give
7% when I lived that way.

--
Paul

[replied via google so apologies if it looks weird]

A question - do *any* of the NR ticket windows at Walthamstow deal with
Oyster?



I was deliberately vague above - I know that the two windows on the
Liverpool Street platform there DON'T. The windows on the Chingford
side, I don't remember (I'm thinking they must do for the original claim
to be true!), but I'll have a look and see (or someone here will know,
I'm sure).

OK - I went there this morning.

ALL of the NR ticket windows on BOTH sides of the station say "Oyster
not available at this window. Please go to LUL office downstairs."

Of course, none of the NR machines can do Oyster either and there are
no LUL machines.

There is ONE single LUL ticket window (badly-positioned next to the
luggage gate and in my 3 years of living there, I would say it's closed
A LOT (I can't quantify that - sorry!) of the time.

The newsagent next to the station (corner of Selbourne Road and Hoe
Street) is a Ticket Stop though.

Maybe when they finish the subway to the bus station (was meant to be
open a few months ago, but has now been put back another 18 months to 2
years - ha!), they will provide some better facilities.

I hope LUL do anyway - WAGN/"one" sure as hell won't.

On 26 Aug 2005 06:01:28 -0700, wrote:

[replied via google so apologies if it looks weird]
OK - I went there this morning.

ALL of the NR ticket windows on BOTH sides of the station say "Oyster
not available at this window. Please go to LUL office downstairs."

This happened when One upgraded from APTIS (which had a plug in unit) to
new machines which are not compatible. A nonsense but then the attitude
of the TOCs and Rail Settlement Plan to Prestige always was nonsensical
when I was trying to negotiate with them and convince them that the
scheme was going to happen. Now it has I suspect the attitude has not
changed very much if a recent article in Modern Railways is anything to
go by.

Of course, none of the NR machines can do Oyster either and there are
no LUL machines.

I don't think there is any form of NR automatic ticket machine that is
compatible with Oyster. Space for machines, rooms to put them and for
passengers queuing to use them is the real problem at Walthamstow. The
station can get so busy that it would not be acceptable to eat up
circulation space with queues. It is bad enough when the queue for the
LU ticket office stretches up the staircase.

There is ONE single LUL ticket window (badly-positioned next to the
luggage gate and in my 3 years of living there, I would say it's closed
A LOT (I can't quantify that - sorry!) of the time.

You can blame me for the luggage gate issue as we had to compromise on
the design when we did the project to put the gates in. The line
management wanted a huge ticket office but there was no cash to buy it
and whoever represented the main line railway then (!) would object to
such a proposal as they would lose too much money.

The newsagent next to the station (corner of Selbourne Road and Hoe
Street) is a Ticket Stop though.

Yes and there is another ticket stop along Hoe Street near the top of
the High Street.

Maybe when they finish the subway to the bus station (was meant to be
open a few months ago, but has now been put back another 18 months to 2
years - ha!), they will provide some better facilities.

Out of curiosity where did you hear that timescale from? I have been
told recently that the alternative company to Metronet that will do the
fit out and knock through are all ready to go. I have to say I am
deeply unimpressed with the lack of progress but I don't know the
reasons for the appalling delay.

I hope LUL do anyway - WAGN/"one" sure as hell won't.

Unless there is more space than I can foresee in the subway link then I
doubt there will be any real expansion of the LU ticketing facility. I
won't mind being proved wrong though.

What is more bizarre is that One have posters up on the Chingford
platform indicating that the ticket office is to be rebuilt and new
roofs provided for the ramped walkways [1] and various other "facelift"
type things done. They have secured funds from all over the place to
do this work.

[1] to replace the "temporary" 1968 structures that were removed earlier
this year.
--
Paul C


Admits to working for London Underground!