The Freedom Pass Explained

My friend, and regular visitor Debra, has asked several questions regards the Freedom Pass and my journeys using it. I decided that to answer those questions and give a full understanding, a post was needed. This is going to get a little complicated in places so please bear with me!

The first question – “Are these short distances you travel between stations?” – is probably the most difficult to answer without context. So to give an overview of the potential distances I think we need to envisage the area covered by the pass. Broadly speaking, this is London and its Suburbs within the M25 Ring Road…

Image from Google Maps

…That yellow line forming a rough circle through the green areas around London. Ignore the smaller circle that you can see inside the built up areas – That is the North and South Circular roads and our pass takes us a lot further out than that!

Now we need to talk about ticketing because that plays a key role in where our pass can take us. There has been a strong desire to get away from paper tickets on public transport for many years. There are many reasons for this ranging from convenience for the travelling public to political machinations. In 2003 Transport for London introduced the Oyster Card for travel within London on Buses, Underground, Tramlink and the Docklands Light Railway. It was subsequently expanded to include travel on national rail services too. Pricing for journeys is based on a system of concentric zones. The area initially covered has expanded over the years – this is the current zone map…

Map courtesy of Transport for London and available on the TfL website

In general the Oyster Zones form the basis of where the Freedom Pass can be used with a few anomalies. This is the simplified map showing the route validity for the Freedom Pass…

Map courtesy of Transport for London and available on the TfL website

Now to answer that question – short distances? In comparison with getting on a train to go to Scotland these are short distances. But to give a sense of scale using some London Overground routes as an example… Watford Junction to London Euston = 17 miles; Stratford to Clapham Junction or Richmond = 17 miles; Gospel Oak to Barking Riverside = 14 miles give or take. A trip from Watford Junction down to East Croydon using London Overground and Southern services would be just over 25 miles.

On any day out I will usually be travelling sections of different routes to get to my destination, so none of the individual distances will be long. Lets do the trip from East Finchley to Harrow & Wealdstone as I did it last Tuesday… Northern Line to Archway = 2 miles. Then London Overground from Upper Holloway to Gospel Oak = 1 mile; Gospel Oak to Willesden Junction = 4.5 miles. Finally, Bakerloo Line from Willesden Junction to Harrow & Wealdstone = 5.75 miles – 13.25 miles total not including walking.

“Are they commuter trains, primarily?” – Yes. Although the term local trains is probably more appropriate to the national rail services I use as they run throughout the day rather than at peak times only. They usually call at all stops along the route.

“Light Rail” – No and Yes 🤣 The Docklands Light Railway speaks for itself…

…The Tramlink is Light Rail too…

…especially when it gets away from the roads😅 I guess you could view the London Underground as a form of Light Rail…

…but in reality it’s the worlds oldest ‘Rapid Transit’ and incorporates companies with mainline pretentions (The Metropolitan Railway for example) 😎👍

Additionally, the pass is valid on all London buses and on local bus routes throughout the UK!

Finally – the anomalies! I can travel to Watford outside of the Oyster Zones because it is served by London Overground (whose trains I must use). The same is true of Cheshunt, Amersham and Epping – all outside the M25 but served by London Overground, the Metropolitan Line and the Central Line respectively. When it opened, The Elizabeth Line introduced the biggest anomaly of all – I can now travel from Shenfield in Essex all the way across central London and out to Reading in Berkshire. That’s over 60 miles!

And in future, who knows? The possibility of Transport for London taking over the Thameslink routes has been mooted before – Cambridge, Bedford and Peterborough through to Brighton would become a possibility were that to happen😅 Never say never🤣

Mix ‘n’ Match

A week of trains and steps… Today I completed a consecutive 7 days of doing over 8000 steps. That’s an important thing for my health and wellbeing. Now I think I’ll ease back for the weekend before setting out to put together a string of 13 days for the next level. Why 8000 steps? I know that most of the fitness trackers suggest 10k steps but many medical sources suggest that this is a figure plucked out of the air – around 20 minutes spent walking at a brisk pace being more beneficial. So I’ve picked 8k steps as a target that I know I can achieve most days and I think having a target that you can do is important because failing your target all the time is demoralising and leads to giving up on exercise. That’s the background and it ties in with my Freedom Pass Project, my general trainspotting and other activities. So let’s have a photographic panorama of some recent outings that I haven’t reported…👍

For my Freedom Pass Project I still needed to take a London Underground train to Ealing Broadway. I sorted that out last Wednesday by picking up the Central Line from Shepherds Bush to terminate at Ealing. I spent 3 hours on the station during which time I saw 15 freight trains – that’s roughly double the norm. The reason for this is the closure of the line between Didcot and Oxford for major repairs to a failing bridge over the Thames. Many of these extra freights are intermodal services from Southampton Docks to destinations in the Midlands and Northern England. Here’s one such train…

…66413 heading a service from Leeds to Southampton – This would not normally have routed via London as it’s quite a detour! There are a lot of diversions and it’s putting a lot of stress on the available slots. Some freights were clearly sharing the same slot, cutting margins and causing minor delays for passenger services. For my US friends, this loco is wearing a livery based on the Genesee and Wyoming as that company now owns Freightliner.

I post a morning photo on Twitter every day. This started because I was helping a young Serbian friend with his photographic learning. Subsequently I discovered, when I stopped posting, that a couple of my other trucking friends had been enjoying the images. In particular, Jürgen, asked that I continue. So that is what I have done. We now share morning photos for our friends. Jürgen has been displaying some great shots of where he lives and I’ve been doing a mix of my usual😅 Here’s a shot that I shared taken on Ballards Lane in Finchley Central…

A visit to Clapham Junction always gives a lot of steps – just walking down to East Finchley Station and then changing at Bank for the Waterloo & City line before riding a Southwestern Railway service out to Clapham will give you over 4k steps in one hit! Then moving around the station to try and catch a flavour of what’s passing through can easily add another 6k! – It’s a big station 🤣 Here’s a Class 455 unit – now nearly 5 years beyond its intended retirement – amidst the weeds on the Wimbledon side of the station…

…While on the Richmond side of the station we have a Bow depot to Tonbridge train of empty hoppers behind 66764 of GBRf…

Epi wanted to take a walk over to the garden centre in Bounds Green while she is having a week off work. This is only 2.4 miles (5 mile round trip) but in North London that includes a few sharp climbs and the boredom of walking Creighton Avenue😅 Here’s a 102 bus on Alexandra Park Road close to our destination…

A trip out yesterday saw me visiting Hampstead Heath station where I caught a shot of the Hoo Junction to Whitemoor yard engineers train…

…A train of ballast on this occasion. Then I walked home over Hampstead Heath. I’ve been promising Jürgen that I’d take him for a virtual walk across The Heath and I took several images to post on Twitter for him. Here’s a couple of them…

…And while I’m out and about, I mustn’t forget my Trucking buddies – Here’s a nice example of a Scania P500XT at a building site on The Bishops Avenue…

Hope you enjoyed my week of exercise 🤣👍

CMMC – May Pick a Topic from my Photo

Cee’s photo has a number of suggested subjects this month – ‘house, building, construction, lumber, basement, steps, window, reflection…’ So let’s see what we can come up with for this Midweek Madness Challenge👍

Lets start with Steps and Building…

…And the building is predominantly White.

Window – well quite a few windows…

Some Outdoor Stairs…

…This is Xstrata at Kew Gardens and is a bit of an Oddball installation as it allows visitors to walk in the tree canopy. It also sways quite a bit😅

And finally, a Fire Escape…