Comment by hdgvhicv
1 day ago
I don’t think oyster worked on overground when TfL took over, other than the special sections where there was co-acceptance (harrow-queens park, Richmond branch). Of course in those days most regular users had a travelcard.
Oyster, and later contactless, makes things far easier to travel. I’ve just been on a u-bahn and bus trip in Nuremberg, had to download an app to buy a ticket, no idea whether I got the right one or not.
Oh, I see, you mean maybe when it's "Silverlink" your Oyster might not work at a barrier and then maybe a month later it's "Overground" and now it works?
Maybe. There are definitely cases where the re-brand is accompanied with physical works that make access legal, but I couldn't find cases where those works change practical access. If I have an Oyster card, and I walk up to a station with no barriers and board a Silverlink train that "doesn't take" Oyster, it does work it just wasn't legal. A month later with new "Overground" branding, that's legal and they've installed a barrier-less validation terminal so I could and should tap it with the Oyster as I pass.
I looked for, but couldn't find, pre-Overground stations where there's a NR style gate line which is physically capable of reading Oyster, but Oyster is forbidden and so you can't enter until - with the re-branding - TfL turns on the Oyster mode. I think it's likely that did not happen because it just seems pointlessly annoying, but I can't prove it.
Oyster came in as travelcard only, and was valid on all in zone transport including the pre-tfl North London Line etc.
It wasn’t valid to say Watford though.
When PAYG was introduced it was not valid on trains (other than a couple of exceptions)
But You’re right, Oyster PAYG came in the day TfL took over from silverlink - 11 November 2007. It was 2010 before it came out across the whole travelcard area on rail services. That was because the other TOCs didn’t like the idea and felt they’d lose out on revenue.
> Oyster came in as travelcard only
I don't think this can be correct. One of the early Oyster "problems" was that people who'd routinely made some particular journey on their travelcard, perhaps for years, would get locked out of Oyster and be unable to start a second journey. The reason was that their Travelcard had never been valid for their journey but it was valid for both the entry station and exit station and before Oyster it had no way to connect the dots, now Oyster could see the journey route wasn't allowed and so it charged them, making their balance negative, whereupon they can't start a second journey until they pay for the first.
Edited to add: Oh wait, maybe you meant only on (what would be) Overground stations ? That seems very weird, but I guess I can't prove you're wrong.