London Freedom Passes to extend to Reading

A reader sent me a very interesting response to a query he made to Transport for London, regarding Crossrail and his Freedom Pass (the pass given to all London residents aged 60 or over, allowing free travel on trains, Tubes and buses).

He wanted to know how far his free travel will extend west of Paddington, and to his surprise he was told that because Crossrail is a Transport for London service he will be able to use his Freedom Pass throughout to Reading.

It doesn’t say if there will be any interavailability with local Great Western Railway Class 387s for the same journeys, but perhaps that has yet to be negotiated. We do know that Oyster will extend to Reading, and (again) there will be very big issues to sort there.

Will use be restricted to local trains, or even only Crossrail trains? Or will Oyster also have separate readers for using inter-city services, rather as Gatwick Express does at Victoria? The danger there is that Oyster charges by entrance and exit according to platform, and if trains are swapped around you can be charged the wrong fare.

Then there’s the whole issue of what will happen in the 1600-1900 peak out of Paddington. Currently it’s counted as offpeak on Class 387s and Turbos, but peak on inter-city services - and Oyster normally charges peak automatically anyway. There’s a great deal still to sort out.

Turning to GWR’s excellent timetable book, this was reissued from January 1. It’s now the only comprehensive single timetable book published by any operator - that is, including all services in its area, although that doesn’t apply west of Newport.

With 368 pages the excellent introduction alone takes up 72 pages, with copious information on tickets, engineering work, onboard facilities, and even four pages devoted to a history of each of its 19 named trains.

Seating plans of its High Speed and Intercity Express Trains are included, plus layouts of its Sleepers. The station list has details of every station it serves, right down to ticket office opening hours. There is also a section on heritage railways in its area.

The bus links section is very detailed and includes operator details, frequencies and journey times to 104 places. Incidentally, in RAIL 841’s The Fare Dealer I said that while only South Western Railway and GWR offered full information on bus links, only SWR published these online. In fact, the GWR file is also now online.

There is a good system map at the rear with table numbers shown, so using this is the easiest way to navigate around the book. A much better table-number system has been adopted with a B Group covering services based on Bristol, D Group for Devon, K Group for Cornwall (no doubt emulating the Cornish ‘Kernow’), and T Group for the Thames Valley (including the Cotswolds and ReadingGatwick).

This publication puts all other operators to shame and is well worth the £8 cover price. And it’s now available from even more stations: Bath Spa, Bristol Parkway, Bristol Temple Meads, Cheltenham Spa, Chippenham, Didcot Parkway, Exeter St Davids, Gloucester, London Paddington, Newbury, Newton Abbot, Oxford, Penzance, Plymouth, Reading, Slough, Swindon, Taunton, Truro and Westbury.

Alternatively, it can be sent by post for an additional £3.90 by telephoning GWR’s Customer Support on 0345 700 0125 (06002300 daily).