On 15 Feb, 11:20, "tim...." wrote:
"Alex Ingram" wrote in message

...

Paul Cummins wrote:
I've been thinking abot the Oyster card. I can see some of the major
benefits, lack of moving parts, no damage to ticket etc.

But I wonder if the primary reason for Oyster was to prevent dumbelling?

I don't know what you mean by dumbelling

Buying a season ticket for the first two stations and the last two stations
of your journey and not buying a ticket for the middle bit.

Given the zonal aspect of LU fares, I doubt that it is much of a problem on
the underground. *It's more "beneficial" for longer journeys on the
overground

A dumbbell on London Underground works in two ways.
With Oyster: the travelcard loaded on the card is for zones 2 & 3 (it
could be a weekly, a monthly or more). The customer does not touch in
at the station of ingress (eg Finsbury Park), travels through zone 1
and touches out at eg Stockwell. No fare is charged for zone 1. Oddly,
a £6 fare is not charged, as the travelcard is within its zones of
availability.

This is much more common with paper tickets, which nowadays can only
be bought from NR, but are valid on LUL.
A paper travelcard for zones 2 & 3 will operate the gates at eg Camden
Town and Tooting Broadway. The customer should buy a zone 1 extension
for every trip made through zone 1, but may fail to do so.