No raving about rovers and rangers

A couple of weeks ago I decided to take advantage of a First Great Western Oxfordshire Day Ranger ticket to explore the line between Reading and Banbury and stop off at a few places in between. I'd only heard about this ticket from an article in The Railway Herald and there were no details, when I checked, on the National Rail web site. To give First Great Western their due, this ranger along with a selection of other rovers and rangers was detailed on their web site with a nicely coloured and simple to read map, which could be downloaded, showing the areas of validity. Two important pieces of information were missing though. No mention of whether this of the other rangers/rovers could be purchased with a Network Railcard and perhaps more importantly whether they are valid on other operators' services. I sent off an e-mail to First Great Western via their web site in the week before I was due to use the Oxfordshire Day Ranger and still, some two weeks later, I am waiting for a reply.

Similarly, I sent an e-mail to London Midland earlier in the year about whether they still offered Rover/Ranger tickets as Central Trains/Silverlink had done. In contrast to FGW, there is no information about this type of ticket on the LM web site. An e-mail query, which had to be chased produced a rather terse response. Yes, they are still offering Rovers/Rangers and they will be producing publicity in due course. Why not now?

It seems from my experience that most rail companies don't want people to know about their Rovers/Rangers and try their best to keep them secret. I did have an enjoyable week a couple of years ago using a 'West Midlands Rover' but that caused problems as not all the staff I encountered on my travels were aware of its validity.

Personally I think the range of rover and ranger tickets is excellent and if taking a day out where you want to visit several different places or just want to enjoy a number of trips, they represent great value. They should be publicised more and at least every TOC's web site should have details of the rovers and rangers they issue and/or accept on their services. If FGW can do it, albeit with some misgivings on the information provided, why can't everybody else?

Oxfordshire Day Ranger

Yesterday I enjoyed a day out using First Great Western's recently introduced Oxfordshire Day Ranger ticket. At £15 it represents excellent value, allowing unlimited travel between Oxford and Reading, Oxford and Moreton-in Marsh (on the Cotswold Line), Oxford and Banbury and Oxford and Bicester Town. I choose to keep to the main artery between Banbury and Reading, with stops at Oxford (where I started my journey), Banbury, Didcot Parkway and Reading.

The ticket can be bought from most staffed National Rail stations although I found the knowledge of this Ranger at Milton Keynes Central to be rather lacking. Unfortunately with the revisions to the X5 bus service, which no longer services Oxford Rail Station, it is not possible to purchase a through ticket including the bus journey.

Although it may have been a bright, sunny day, it was not one without its problems. Firstly, the wind was bitingly cold, so I spent little more than an hour at any of my destinations. Any longer and I am sure I would have been frozen to the spot! Also, with the sun low in the sky I had problems with reflections and shadows in unwanted places. Getting a decent shot of anything was near impossible and a couple of times I felt like giving up. However, I hope that some of the results I got are worth it, which can be seen on my Fotopic site.