Trams

When discussing the modern day trams you simply have to defer to the superb Croydon Tramlink - The Unofficial Site and the associated Croydon Tramlink Yahoo! Group created by Stephen Parascandalo. Sadly Stephen died in a road accident in 2007. The Group has carried on with new moderators agreed by the membership and remains an excellent source of informed information and opinion. Members of the group are also looking to keep the web site running and the first steps in that direction were taken in late 2008, though how well it will go remains to be seen.

When discussing Tramlink it would be easy to drift off into historical discussions about the old railway lines and stations. However Nick Catford has already nailed the subject on his superb Disused Stations site, an affiliate of his equally brilliant Subterranea Britannica. Of particular interest will be the pages on Addiscombe, Bingham Road and Woodside stations.

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I am still chewing over exactly what I can write about the trams that hasn't already been done a lot better already (see my comments above).

Something I can perhaps do in the interim is to try to help answer one question that does crop up now and again…

It has long been a requirement that ALL Oyster users, not just PAYG users, should touch in at the start of their tram journeys when they are travelling to Wimbledon and more recently posters and notices were changed to indicate that this was to prevent an Underground fare being charged. So why is this?

I can't remember where I got the information from originally (though it was certainly a reliable and informed source), but I had long understood that the requirement to touch in was because the positioning of the gatelines at Wimbledon made it vulnerable to short ticket fraud ('dumb-belling') using period bus passes. Regardless of whether that was ever true, the current situation seems likely to be more to do with the introduction of the maximum cash fare on Oyster PAYG towards the end of 2006.

Wimbledon is in zone 3 but passengers arriving by tram can use period travelcards valid only in zones 4, 5 and/or 6, or they can be using period bus passes. An Oyster card with one of those those period tickets could also be used for a PAYG journey to Wimbledon by London Underground. However in the latter case a maximum cash fare needs to be applied if the Oyster card was not touched in correctly. The requirement to touch in on Tramlink allows the exit gates to determine whether to apply this maximum cash fare or not.

Clearly there isn't really any need to touch in if the Oyster holds a period travelcard valid in zone 3, but it makes sense to simplify matters and just tell all Oyster users to touch in if they are travelling to Wimbledon.