Great Western Coffee Shop

I am trying to find the excess fare from Zone 6 boundary to Dartford but cannot find any information other than fares from the last station (Barnehurst on my proposed route). Are these published anywhere.  Also can you buy an all zones travelcard from the TVMs at Paddington or at Trowbridge station?  LT machines will not give a railcard discount as far as I am aware.

You used, a long time ago, to be able to find London Zone 6 as a 'station' on the online journey planners, but I think they've been removed. Are they to be found on brfares.com?

If you want a railcard discount, you have to get your travelcard from a ticket office.  Those outside the zone 6 boundary might be unwilling to sell you one without a ticket to the boundary as an anti-fraud measure, but Paddington ticket office definitely sell these with railcard discounts.

If you're off to the ticket office anyway, you could ask them to do the travelcard from Dartford: £8.90 vice £8.30 for the zone 1-6 travelcard*. An effective 'excess' of 60p.

Having said that, I vaguely remember reading a while back stations inside zone 1-6 may be reluctant to issue outboundary travelcards which is why I'd just buy and collect it online for something like this.

For reference it's £2.25 return for Boundary Zone 6 (0072) to Dartford with a railcard* and a single is £1.85.

*assuming non-network railcard if in the week & off-peak etc. etc.

Thanks for the help.  Checking up on this, Dartford is now classed as zone 8 so that a zones 1-9 travelcard at £8.90 with my old man's railcard will do the trick.

If you have Oyster, and load your Senior Railcard onto it, the most you'll pay for traveling in zones 1-9 off peak is £8.25

I had noticed that, but Oyster off-peak appears to have an evening restriction which a Travelcard does not.

There is. My apologies, I'm used to using my DSB Railcard on Oyster for which the Off Peak daily price cap always applies. I forgot about the afternoon Peak period applying to other Railcards loaded on Oyster.

If you do plan to travel between 1600-1859 then, yes, the paper Zones 1-9 Travelcard with Senior Railcard discount is better value.