Having not travelled by train for a long time I was told by the staff today to buy a paper travel card as there was no point in using my top up Oyster card to travel into London and back and to run around on the tube. Yet the leaflet suggests that I would never have been charged more than the £6.30 I paid for the travel card. Was the ticket guy correct and if so what is point of the Oyster card- I thought paper tickets were history anyway.

A few weeks ago I went to Greenwich via the P4 and the DLR. On the way back on the DLR I touched out using the available thingies at Lewisham DLR station. How exactly do these things know that I was checking out as opposed to checking in to go somewhere else - I can't see how these particular ones are directional as they seem open to all comers- do they record the fact that I got on at Greenwich and assume that I have completed my journey at Lewisham? Today I travelled back through the newly refurbished Lewisham overground station and could not see any opportunities to check out even if I had needed to.

Complicated all this! Wonder how tourists manage- and of course with all these people going to be pouring in for the Olympics I trust that explaining all of this in several hundred different languages is in hand...