Great Western Trains Rail Ranger and Rover Tickets

Rovers and Rangers have been available online for many years from GWR but as you say the great weakness of this has always been that the only delivery method is by post. Give enough notice and this can be free (can't currently check with GWR as it isn't working properly for me but SWR which runs the same system offered me free first class post for a ranger 7 days hence) but this can only be to a UK address and requires too much forward planning most of the time.

They have apparently stated that these will eventually be available via app and / or Touch Smartcard but it has been a long wait already. Would be needed if the ticket offices were actually curtailed though. More likely they'll be scrapped I fear.

They could, and should, put them on the TVM's. like Northern Rail have done.

Northern have every Rover/Ranger in the country on their TVM's, even Brit Rail passes (although not all Brit Rail passes have fares loaded), including some very local Rangers which I can't actually trace what they are in spite of a lot of research. But we have far better machines than GWR.

The only drawback is that the TVM's can't issue advance dated ones currently, although normal point to point tickets can be advance dated. My last three trips to GWR (Portway to Bristol, Reading Green Park to Reading and Marsh Barton to Exeter) I have advance issued on TVM here, rather than wait until in the area.

Or, for local Rovers/Rangers Avanti also have them on their TVM's.

The current lot of ticket machines in GWR stations are overall less capable than the previous ones, but for most stations they are now used much less than they used to be, with online tickets often being 70+%.

The number of rovers & rangers sold at any particular station is small though - pulling out examples Exeter St Davids sold 152 last year, just under 3 a week, Bristol Temple Meads 120, & Oxford 36. Can be great value but maybe not well known enough any more.

I saw people buying a Day Rover ticket from the guard on a GWR train last week having already boarded the train.

You can see more River/Ranger Tickets for the entire country here:>
https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/ticket-types/promotions/?promotionType=ranger-rover

This web site is far better than the National Rail one at providing information about Rovers and Rangers- http://www.railrover.org/

Massively more intuitive and informative.

Neither website lists all the ones that you can buy on Northern TVM's though.

As my local station is unstaffed I always used to buy Rovers/Rangers from the guard/conductor. That only stopped when Northern introduced penalty fares. So now you can only buy on train by cash if you have got a Permit to Travel- not by Credit/Debit Card. That was what forced Northern to put the Rovers/Rangers on their TVM's.