One Day Tickets

- Red Rover (red buses)
- Green Rover (country buses)
- Golden Rover (country buses + Green Line Coaches)
- Weekend Rover (Tube validity)
- Central London Tube Rover (Tube validity)

can’t remember the restrictions though!

I think the Rovers were available on weekends/BH only when first introduced. A child red rover was half a crown c1962.

You're spot-on with Golden Rovers-my aunt used one in 1963(?) on a trip to us near Maidstone from her bunker base in Slough. Always wondered if the ticket title didn't actually refer to the sort of hound ladies like her were reduced to keeping in their reduced circumstances, instead of the usual Crufts-winning miniatures.

Golden Rovers were introduced by London Country after the split from LT.

Commission -- yes, because my source of Red Rovers was a newsagent's shop. It was a real nuisance you couldn't buy them from bus conductors (presumably because the conductors' Gibson machines didn't have date wheels).
Presumably, they were a device to encourage wide-ranging leisure and pleasure travel. When the minimum (2-stage) fare was only 3d and quite a reasonable journey of 5 or so miles less than a shilling, five bob was a big outlay. A 10 mile journey (nowadays eg from zone 4 or 5) off peak day return into London by train or tube was, as I remember it, 3/3 in about 1962.
We forget how cheap LT travel was then, even compared with wages at about £12 a week. Flanders and Swann, in their song Omnibus, had the lines "If tickets cost a pound apiece..Why should you make a fuss?
It's worth it just to ride inside
That thirty-foot-long by ten-foot-wide, Inside that monarch of the road, Observer of the Highway Code,
That big six-wheeler Scarlet-painted London Transport Diesel-engined
Ninety-seven horse-power Omnibus! "
In the days of three-halfpenny half fares, £1 apiece seemed as remote as Doomsday.

Red and Twin Rovers were issued on special cards, only Green Rovers were issued as Gibson tickets. IIRC you had to go to a garage or tube station to purchase the first two. I had to go into North Street Garage to what I think were the windows where conductors booked in their takings to buy one.

Green Rovers were valid on weekdays after 9:30 but you needed to carry a bus map or flyer with the terms on as conductors sometimes tried to refuse to sell them earlier on a Saturday.

I am not sure if rovers were valid on night bus routes but these were so infrequent that the possibility never arose for me. During the day it was easy, if it was a red London bus then it was valid. There were restrictions on which services a Twin Rover could be used on (certainly not on the far north end of the Bakerloo)and on Green Rovers where a route went outside the LT area. There was also a suppliment payable if you went through the Darford Tunnel. The run on the tunnel approach at speed in a GS was quite an experience.

I'm sure Golden Rovers were available in the days LT ran the country buses as it was also available on Green line Coaches. somewhere I've got a box full of old Rover tickets.

Red Rovers were only available at weekends if I remember correctly or maybe only after 0930 M-F, any time at weekends. Same with twin rovers. I don't recall any limit on going to Watford Junction on a twin rover on the Bakerloo although I never done the job, though there might have been a restriction on the top end of the Met beyond Ricky.

The best way to get an underground "rover" during the week when bunking off school was to go to the local station and get a half return to somewhere like Southgate which was 3/3d from Hammersmith. the clerk would cut the ticket diagonally to indicate it was a half ticket (obvious). the 3/3d fare extended a long way on all the other lines, Hainault loop, Uxbridge, Edgware, Morden...just had to make sure the 2nd TTI wasn't the same bloke as the first one. Having said that I can only recall getting the ticket inspected about 3 times, and that was usually on the Met main.

I learnt a lot about the Underground by not going to school when I should have!

3/3d was about 16p in today's money.


edited to add I done the Dartford Tunnel once in a GS either on the 300 or 399 as it was renumbered, I never got charged an excess on there. As stated, the ride on the GS to the tunnel was "lively" with a lot ov vibration which, all these years later, I can attribute to a very worn propshaft Layrub coupling or worn centre prop bearing rubber.

Certainly Red Rovers weren't generally available M-F at first. They may have relented in the August school holidays and later on when they discovered there was no revenue loss. AIRI, those you got from newsagents were detached from books by perforations. Those from stations were on season ticket shaped card, and had the name of the issuing BO in small print under the date panel.
My friends and I were really taken with being able to hop on and off at will, but my parents, who had been used to the LCC shilling all day tickets pre-war, were underwhelmed.
The trouble with using child bisects was that you couldn't go through the barrier at the end and back shortly after. There weren't many bisects around, and even the most bored or dozy ticket collector was apt to notice them. They were OK if you just stayed on the trains and stations.

I've dug out the Capital Transport "London Country" book.
The Golden Rover was introduced by LCBS on 16th August 1970, priced 15/- (so having exactly 6 months on sale at pre-decimal prices!)

Some really great replies, thanks all.

Although the Red Rover outlets certainly weren't as common as Oyster Ticket stops, there was one in most shopping centres. The one I used was a stationer's/newsagents near Woolworths at Chingford Mount.
Revupmister, what was the commission, 10%?

In London Underground Architecture and History (Long and Magarigal) 2011, there is a photo of an ad for the Central Tube Rover "unlimited travel for a day" for £1.25. Photo might be mid/late 1970s.
Anyone remember this?

Based on the consumer prices index, £1.60 in 1981 is equivalent to £6.32 (source: inflation.iamkate.com/)
The 7-day "Go-as-you-please" ticket, approximately equivalent to a Zone 1-6 travelcard, was £15 - equivalent to £59.25. In 2018 it is £62.30 with slightly greater Validity (Woodford-Epping, Northwood-Moor Park and Harrow & Wealdstone-Hatch End), plus National Rail in the zones (and trams and DLR, but they didn't exist in 1981)

We could always ask Neil Sedaka, didn't he do a song about one day tickets?