Difficulty booking Day Ranger tickets at Cardiff Queen St

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This morning I tried purchasing an ‘Explore Cardiff Capital’ day ranger with my 16-25 railcard. This can’t be bought online or at TVMs so I went to the ticket window at Queen St station.

At least the clerk knew how to find the page on his machine, but he turned the screen to show me that the fare was only available at £4.50 Adult. TfW uses some sort of Fujitsu machines with a square screen on an arm.

The TfW page shows the Adult fare as £5.50 and £3.65 with a Railcard (https://tfw.wales/ways-to-travel/rail/ticket-types/rovers-and-rangers/explore-the-capital) and BRFares lists a valid discounted fare (https://www.brfares.com/!roverdetail?nlc=I512&rlc=YNG&rvr=ECC)

Eventually his supervisor/ more senior colleague came over and manually overrode the machine to print a £3.65 ticket.

All this took a bit of time and I missed the first Penarth train as a result. Not a good look for TfW if a ticket they advertise on their own website is a massive pain to try and buy. Hopefully these will be available at TVMs one day or online.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 7 Apr 2025 ==

Incidentally I’ve just visited Penarth ticket office on my way through and they showed me that they could have sold me a £3.65 discounted day ranger from an identical looking machine.

 

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I doubt that many ranger tickets are sold in the grand scheme of things.

I remember being at Manchester Oxford Road once, the guy infront of me bought a ranger then I went and bought a completely different rover.

I bought a two zone North Wales rover at Chester about 10 years ago. The clerk I spoke to was evidently unsure, someone more senior came over and did it. Then asked if I had a couple of minutes or was in a rush, before showing the rest of the booking office how to do it before selling it.