I have a senior railcard.  In the TfL world, I have added it to my Oyster card, and I know that conversely it can't be added to my bankcard: so I only use the Oyster card.

Beyond the Oyster world, I'm trying to work out whether I would want to use contactless, and I'm coming round to the idea that the answer for practical purposes is no, though I haven't found a definitive answer.  All I have found is a suggestion that currently the answer is sometimes no:

https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/tickets-railcards-and-offers/buying-a-ticket/pay-as-you-go-with-contactless/

I'm only an occasional traveller so I think I'll just stick with buying tickets in the same way as I have always done.

Pay as you go with contactless may not always be the cheapest way to pay for your journey. For example:

If you have a Railcard or are eligible for other discounts (like a Child discount), it may be cheaper to buy a ticket for your journey. Currently discounts cannot be applied to pay as you go with contactless

Southern Railway passengers due refunds because of ongoing 'technical issue'

Southern Railway say some passengers will be receiving refunds after being overcharged because of a 'technical issue'.

The company says a small number of its customers are affected by an ongoing glitch at stations where the option to travel using contactless payments was introduced last month.

From December 14th, the payment method was introduced at an additional 11 stations on the network including East Grinstead, Oxted and Reigate.

The Rail Delivery Group said the expansion of pay-as-you-go technology is designed to make train travel easier and more convenient, aligning it with the Transport for London network.

Refunds for journeys impacted since the middle of last month will be issued automatically by Transport for London from Monday 5th January.

The issue won't be resolved until March when fares are next set, meaning customers who do pay more will receive refunds weekly.

People travelling using paper tickets, Smartcard journeys, or eTickets aren't affected.

In a statement on its website, Southern Railway says, "TfL have begun issuing refunds for affected journeys as part of interim arrangements. Passengers can expect to begin seeing refunds applied to their accounts shortly, and refunds will continue to be processed on a weekly basis while the issue remains in place.

"If you think you may have been overcharged, you can review up to seven days of journey history and charges by setting up an account on the TfL website, which also provides additional useful features. To check the charge applied against the correct fare, you can compare your journey details on National Rail Enquiries.

"We are working with TfL on a permanent fix. However, changes to address this issue can only be implemented as part of a wider ‘Fare Setting Round’, with the next one scheduled for March 2026. In the meantime, we are ensuring that all fares data for pay as you go with contactless journeys is accurate and fully verified before release. Additional checks and testing will also be carried out to prevent this issue from recurring.

"Passengers travelling from some stations may currently be undercharged when using pay as you go with contactless. You will not be asked to pay any extra for past or current journeys. From March onwards, fares will be charged at the correct rate."

My recollection of the 1970s is that (from South Wales), the only long-distance fares that carried a time restriction were those to Reading and London (and presumably stations between the two).
There were time restrictions on local fares, but generally the difference between cheap day return and ordinary day return was very modest - a nudge, not the punitive difference that applies between many peak/offpeak fares today.
 
<snip>

Waterloo: Valid on services arriving Waterloo 10:00 or later.

When I read the story, I didn't understand why so many of these off peak fares were before 9.30am. Most other fares in the UK before 9.30 (or is it 10am?) are treated as peak.

Have I interpreted that correctly? If so, the people of Reigate have previously been lucky to pay a lower fare at that time of day.

Rail users hit by change to peak time ticketing

The expansion of contactless payments on trains has caused the price of travelling on some services to soar as they now require more expensive peak time tickets.

The change allows people to pay by tapping a bank card or contactless-enabled device on readers at stations, avoiding the need to manually purchase a ticket.

But Rebecca Paul, Conservative MP for Reigate, said the new rules - introduced to 30 more stations in the South East on 14 December - risked "pricing passengers out of rail altogether".

Train operator Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) said the changes meant many passengers would save money and insisted the process was not designed to increase revenue.

The first weekday London-bound Southern service from Reigate, Surrey, that can be boarded with an off-peak day travelcard ticket now departs at 09:28, compared with 08:58 previously.

But when the 08:58 train calls at Redhill just five minutes later, passengers are still able to board it with an off-peak ticket.

A day travelcard that can be used at any time from the stations costs £37.10 whereas an off-peak is £20.60.

There are also new restrictions on travel between 16:00 and 19:00.

"We understand how, for some people, this means fares will rise, but for many others they will fall."

It pointed to a number of savings, such as Reigate passengers making a single journey at weekday off-peak times now paying £7.60 compared with £14.60 previously.

Commuters travelling before 06:30 and returning either before 16:00 or after 19:00 now save £11.60, it added.

Likewise, but it seems to get more & more difficult to find somewhere/someone to do the manual linking when you get a new Railcard. When you do find somewhere - you are in queue behind 25 non-English speaking tourists trying to buy paper tickets.

Because of my Senior Railcard, I always used Oyster within London - the two are manually linked every year. My bank card can never know about my Railcard and I would always be charged the non-discounted fare.

Offering the option for contactless payment for rail travel is a good thing – convenient and simple. But it currently comes with a number of stings in the tail, so if a traveller wants to pay the lowest price for their travel, contactless payment often doesn’t deliver the best price