London Travel Card

[pennine]

Hi there! Between the 13th - 15th August, three of us are going to London for a few days away. We allways use travel cards, and being a bit OCD making sure that we're organised.

From past experince I have purchased travel cards online to Collect from TVM at my local station (Redcar Central) before we go, to avoid queues etc on arrival.

As I have a 16-25 railcard I tend to get the zones 1 - 6 (despite only needing zones 1 & 2 which the other two people I am travelling will be getting). I was wondering, would I be able to purchase these Travel Cards at Redcar Central station in advance. Any codes for tickets etc would be extremely great!

Many thanks

PS TVM at Redcar is dodgy, and we prefer to have all tickets etc printed and in posession so theres no messing or queueing in London.

 

[bb21]

They can certainly be issued at any ticket office.

The destination code required is 0035 (London Zones 1-6) or 0032 (London Zones 1-2). The ticket office should have their own instructions as to where these tickets should be issued from. If not, then a generic 6121 (King's Cross) should suffice.

There is no Railcard discount on inboundary Travelcards except the Zones 1-6 version, however you can get discounted daily caps for Zones 1-2 using Oyster, if you load the Railcard discount onto the card.

 

[pennine]

Many thanks (Im aware I sounded a bit geeky when reading my post back).

I've never understood the whole Oyster thing, so steered clear of them in favour of the traditional tried and tested Travel Card.

I wonder if I get a weird glare when I go into the booking office tomorrow and advised to buy tickets on the day!

 

[bb21]

I wonder if I get a weird glare when I go into the booking office tomorrow and advised to buy tickets on the day!

Probably not, as London Travelcard must be one of the most common tickets issued outside the validity area.

 

[pennine]

Once again, thank you for your help! Makes things much easier!
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

They can certainly be issued at any ticket office.

The destination code required is 0035 (London Zones 1-6) or 0032 (London Zones 1-2). The ticket office should have their own instructions as to where these tickets should be issued from. If not, then a generic 6121 (King's Cross) should suffice.

There is no Railcard discount on inboundary Travelcards except the Zones 1-6 version, however you can get discounted daily caps for Zones 1-2 using Oyster, if you load the Railcard discount onto the card.

Hey there, just thought I should let you know, I went into Redcar Central booking office today. She said the codes were correct, but her Fastis(?) machine wouldn't let her issue them. She did say Middlesbrough, Thornaby and Darlington offices would be able to issue them. She even mentioned that when the TVM is broke (which ironically the red light has been on for the past two days) that she is unable to issue prordered tickets.

I ended up buying all the Travel cards from the Transpennine exprsss website and got them posted out.

Once again though many thanks for the information given.

 

[bb21]

Hey there, just thought I should let you know, I went into Redcar Central booking office today. She said the codes were correct, but her Fastis(?) machine wouldn't let her issue them. She did say Middlesbrough, Thornaby and Darlington offices would be able to issue them. She even mentioned that when the TVM is broke (which ironically the red light has been on for the past two days) that she is unable to issue prordered tickets.

I ended up buying all the Travel cards from the Transpennine exprsss website and got them posted out.

Once again though many thanks for the information given.

That is correct. Northern's Fastis machines do not have ToD capabilities enabled. Those tickets can be released if absolutely necessary but it is a long and winded process involving phone calls so some staff prefer to refer you somewhere else especially if doing so risks causing big delays to other passengers requiring the ticket office.

I am surprised that they couldn't issue the Travelcard. That said, I have had problems with other Fastis systems not being able to issue certain products so I guess it is not totally unexpected.

Glad you have it all sorted.

 

[CyrusWuff]

I am surprised that they couldn't issue the Travelcard. That said, I have had problems with other Fastis systems not being able to issue certain products so I guess it is not totally unexpected.

It's possible the clerk was trying to issue a Redcar - London Zones x-y Travelcard, which would be one explanation, or they could have had the machine looking for Singles.

The origin on the ticket needs to be a station within the relevant zones, so they could have entered London Terminals (NLC 1072) as the origin, set FasTIS to look for Returns (F11 on the Journey Input Screen) and then pressed issue and is should have worked.

 

[pennine]

It's possible the clerk was trying to issue a Redcar - London Zones x-y Travelcard, which would be one explanation, or they could have had the machine looking for Singles.

The origin on the ticket needs to be a station within the relevant zones, so they could have entered London Terminals (NLC 1072) as the origin, set FasTIS to look for Returns (F11 on the Journey Input Screen) and then pressed issue and is should have worked.

No she did put the starting station as Kings Cross. I had taken not of what was suggested and she did have a go - so fair play to our local Linda!

As said I did get my tickets from the transpennine express website on Friday afternoon, and the tickets came Saturday morning!

 

[maniacmartin]

Someone who knows more about TISs might be able to explain this better, but I believe there are 2 modes that FastTIS has: a journey mode and a fares mode.

Some clerks always use the journey mode to find an itinerary for the time you want to travel, then tell the TIS to show the tickets that would be valid for that journey. Because you can't get an itinerary to a Travelcard destination then this will fail. Using the fares mode goes straight to the tickets without bothering with itineraries.

This crops up a lot in certain areas of London with clerks concluding that they can't sell the ticket you ask for

 

[CyrusWuff]

Someone who knows more about TISs might be able to explain this better, but I believe there are 2 modes that FastTIS has: a journey mode and a fares mode.

Kind of...For ordinary tickets you have "Walk-Up" and "Advance" mode. The basic difference between the two being that the latter has date and time fields and a secondary screen to let you adjust various things (such as excluding a specific TOC from the search, restricting the number of changes, forcing a change at a particular station, etc).

In both cases once you've entered the journey details, you can either press ISSUE which shows the next three services for each leg of the journey and highlights potentially cheapest fares; or you can do a "Fares Only" search, which bypasses the timetable search.

Regardless of the option chosen, FasTIS may suppress certain fares, which can generally be shown by pressing the "Filter" button a couple of times. This shouldn't be needed to display London Travelcard prices, however!

Some clerks always use the journey mode to find an itinerary for the time you want to travel, then tell the TIS to show the tickets that would be valid for that journey. Because you can't get an itinerary to a Travelcard destination then this will fail. Using the fares mode goes straight to the tickets without bothering with itineraries.

Regardless of whether you press ISSUE or "Fares Only" when you've set FasTIS up to look for Travelcards, it should give the same results.