What can we learn from old tickets? This is probably the closest I’ll get to an unboxing video by the way. Ko-Fi: ko-fi.com/jagohazzard Patreon: / jagohazzard
I love a bit of technology that was unthinkable before its invention and blindingly obvious afterwards. Standard rail tickets in Japan still follow the Edmondson format and the barrier gates do the clipping.
When I was a young lad (c. 1950), I had thought that I'd like to be a ticket office clerk. That was because at my local station was a gentleman who had a most distictive way of inserting the ticket into the date stamper. That fascinated me for a long time. Now I haven't thought about that in a very long time. You're to blame. You have unboxed a memory of mine.
As a child I recall the cylindrical date stamp machine into which the clerk thrust said ticket in (rather forcefully) and with impressive dexterity spun the ticket around to repeat the process on the other end. Most impressive. Now the preserve of the heritage railways, but still, fond memories. Not to mention, a souvenir of ones trip to the seaside!
Here in Croatia, Edmondson tickets were phased out somewhere around the mid-2000s, while in Serbia they were still in use in late 2012. When I was younger, one of the sounds unavoidably associated with the railways was the sound of the stamp hitting the ticket. If you were to catch an earlier train, you could hear the clerk stamping the date on dozens (or hundreds) of tickets like a machine.
Another lovely facet on your video gem of historical railway. I can recall using those tickets in my young boyhood. Even the unique sound made as the clerk slipped them out of their housing at the ticket window. Sometimes they had to be stamped. But it was never done by a simple press of a stamp. It was quite theatrical. The clerk would ink the stamp on the stamp pad, BAM BAM BAM, then line up the ticket, bringing the stamp down with a KERTHUMP! It convinced me that the ticket clerk was indeed an important part of the railway system!
As a young lad in the early 50's I used to go to school on the then Bakerloo line from Willesden Green. No free travel for kids back then. My 'child's' fare was a penny ha'penny and I remember asking the booking clerk for 'a penny ha'penny half please' - very confusing now. Automatic ticketing was being introduced at that time and near the end of the cardboard tickets the station had run out of pre-printed child tickets of that value so I was issued with an adult 3d (old thrupence) which the booking clerk then cut in half diagonally to create a penny ha'penny ticket!! Very creative! I would then walk the three paces to the ticket barrier (where the very old sign read 'All tickets must be shewn' - note the spelling - and the ticket inspector would punch a hole in it to prevent it being re-used. No wonder the queues for tickets would be snaking out of the station during rush hours, especially on Mondays when weekly tickets were issued as well......happy days
When my brother and I went with our parents on a train journey, invariably the clerk would stamp 3 adult returns and cut one diagonally for the 'two little ones'. I assumed it was standard practice to do that. Only occasionally would I be given a proper child's ticket.
@@roboftherock Yes, diagonal cut was standard practice for any half-fare journeys which didn't have their own dedicated child ticket. Some of the ticket information was printed twice on adult tickets so it would be legible on both halves.
Not trains i lnow, but in the early 1970s the LT child bus fare in my part of London was 2p except during the rush hour when adult fares were charged - 10p for the same journey to school.
So many memories stirred by this video. I trained as a booking clerk on London Underground in 1985. I worked solely with Edmonson Card tickets until the new fangled UTS equipment started being installed from 1987(?). In the 7 years I had in the ticket office I worked at every Met station except Ickenham and Uxbridge. Happy days!
Funny how things come back to you. I have vague memories when, as a child I was taken on train journeys the ticket office at stations would issue small cardboard tickets from a small window with a curved top, and the loud (and rather satisfying) CLUNK as the details of the journey were printed. Also, the old railway parcels service was exceptional. My father was a rep for an agricultural medicines firm for many years, orders were taken and delivery was by rail, every village had a manned station, sometimes two! For urgent orders, if the order was phoned through to head office before "close of play" someone would pack it, and walk across the road to the station (Wellington in Somerset) and put it on the next train. Many's the time, the station mistress who lived next door would bring a parcel up for him before breakfast the next morning. Still, those were the days of two postal deliveries per day, and a "bobby" in every village.
Not 'a penny and a half' but 'a penny ha'penny'. Great episode. I was born in Praed Street in 1941 so this is all very interesting for me. Keep up the good work and thanks.
I remember this style of ticket. They used to issue them on BR Southern Region right up to the mid 1980's.. When doing a long distance journey the guard checking the tickets North of London would often make a comment about these old style Southern Region tickets.
My dad was a booking office clerk with BR ...when u have a queue at a stn booking office it can be hard work issuing these tickets. I think BR replaced these with Aptis machines.
I used to look at the clipped edge of tickets on a long journey as often would be clipped 5 or 6 times by different guards always on the same edge, by the end of a journey the clips formed an intriguing pattern as all the clippers cut a different shaped clip, The management knew which guards had or had not been checking tickets on a particular train.
@@Keithbarber I know when I travelled to the midlands after the great storm of 1987 I got one of these handwritten tickets. But by the time the Capitalcard (The travelcard with return travel to out of zone stations in Network SouthEast albeit SouthEast included Honiton and Worcester)
I remember the cheapest ticket price being 10p in the 80s on those pillar-like,sloping-topped stand-up ticket machines we made use of in the hall one floor below the big main station concourse and platforms at Euston,and on the same level as the ticket barriers in front of the second (of three) level escalators down to the Northern and Victoria line platforms.
Some more fun facts about Edmondson tickets. Bound bundles are numbered in reverse order, i.e. the lowest number is at the "back" of the bundle. This is because they are loaded vertically face up into the dispenser (known as an Edmondson Drop Tube) so the "back" is now at the "bottom" and the lowest numbered ticket will be removed by the booking clerk first. The AM42 on the Aldgate ticket indicates it would have been sold from booking window 42. It was common for each individual booking window at a busy station to have its own ticket series. Obviously Aldgate didn't have 42 windows but the numbering was often inconsistent so is probably something like station number 4, booking window number 2. Likewise the Moorgate ticket was issued from booking window number 1. The Moorgate ticket may be over 100 years old but is date stamped 25AP30, so they were obviously still using up old ticket stock long after Farringdon Street was renamed in 1922. It's also notable the destination is to Baker Street, Edgware Rd, Paddington or Bayswater which was a common way of saving on printing and space by having multiple destinations which had the same fare. The Aldersgate Street ticket is date stamped 11NO10 (11th November 1910) which is 9 days after it was renamed. The St John's Wood Road ticket is date stamped 17DE07.
I love this topic! Many years ago, I was given a pocket bible that had belonged to my great-great uncle. I found a few things between the pages including a couple of pressed flowers, a small piece of paper with some writing on it, and a transfer ticket for Boston's West End Street Railway Company, dated January 15, [18]91.
The Edmondson ticket is a brilliant invention, very much like the postage stamp, at about the same time. Seems absolutely obvious, once someone has made it happen: until this moment, I had never realised it had an inventor. Long ago (early '60s) I had a vacation job with British Rail, and was in it long enough to be entitled to concessional fares, which under some circumstances covered the Underground. I remember a poor ticket clerk at Tottenham Court Road having to write out a ticket by hand for a fare for me.
Used to both like and hate those tickets when a return ticket, at one's destination on the outward journey the ticket collecter at the barrier would tear the ticket in half, keep the outward part and hand back the now small return half. On one's return journey many minutes would often be spent retrieving it from a corner of a pocket, people behind muttering under their breath at one delaying the queue at the barrier.
Although the Metropolitan may have ‘gone’ in 1933, their tickets would have been used until the supply was exhausted which for the more obscure destinations or types could probably meant quite a few years depending on whether LT decided to reissue everything. I’m aware that as an example that some of the LBSCR tickets were still in the ‘Racks’ at places like Pulborough into the late 1950s , so well over 25 years after that company had been absorbed into the Southern Railway.
The British Rail owned Humber Ferry ,which closed with the opening of the Humber Bridge in 1981 still had an LNER Edmonson ticket in occasional use well into the 1970s .It was a permit issued during times of Ferry service disruption ,to allow the holder to travel by train vice ferry via either Doncaster or Retford .
Again, never a disappointment! Your lack of in depth research is a most modest statement Jago. Captivating stuff. I just still don’t begin to fathom how you churn out so much content with such in-depth insight. I don’t even know of anyone out there discrediting any information you’ve given. It is truly astounding, and so much more wholesome than watching Instagram reels of people giving out $$$ to random people for clicks. All power to you and your insatiable quest for knowledge. Thank you sir! 👏
I love the scholarship and arcane knowledge you demonstrate in dating a piece of railroad ephemera. As an afficionado of little-known artifacts of television technical history, it inspires me to ever-greater nerdy depths of research. Though my most recent experience with the Underground is now 40+ years old, I really enjoy your breezy commentary on its even earlier history and your intimate knowledge of places I'll likely never see in person. Thank you!
Interesting stuff! I read that the Railway Clearing House used to gather up all the collected tickets and decide what the railway companies owed each other. That would be a good topic for a video.
In my two visits to London in the Fifties and Sixties, I was intrigued by having to give the little ticket to a man when exiting. Buying tickets was also interesting. A vending machine with buttons labeled for all the destinations. You put in coins and pushed the proper button, and out popped a ticket! What will they think of next.
@@JP_TaVeryMuch The building still exists - it's on Eversholt Street and in BR days it was called Eversholt House; if you walk along the road from the Euston station end, it's on the left, it starts opposite a church and just keeps going until the next entry. As you said, it was huge; I'm not sure when BR stopped using it (I worked in it in the late 1960s), and I think at one time it held the HQ of Sealink
All my years of using the railway service I never knew all these little stories surrounding these stations. I now have a new-found appreciation for it. Thanks Jago! :)
I have a small collection of old tickets. One is for Liverpool Street to Bishopsgate, date stamped 1899 and for 1d.(penny that is). when I worked in the City in the 60's I went to the barrier at Liverpool St. and asked the chap on duty what platform the Bishopsgate trains departed from. The Bishopsgate station had closed many years ago. He looked at the ticket and came out with a stream of cliches (no swearing, mind)- "Well, bless my soul, Good Lord, I can't believe it, well I never", were just a few. Good entertainment for my lunch break!
@@caw25sha Indeed and interesting if there was a passenger ticket for that trip , maybe there was an overlap. Did Davil mean Aldersgate ? or was the ticket having both stations on it as the fare was the same and they were ordering tickets in advance ?
I used to use Edmonton machines when a volunteer at the Bluebell. A couple of things worth mentioning: -The tickets are numbered sequentially, to facilitate tallying up at the end of the day. Looking at the last number of the ticket from the end of the day and subtracting end of day number of yesterday you know how many tickets are sold. In a pre-calculator, pre-decimalisation era, this must have been quite a feat of mathemematics -Return tickets (usually) had a line down the middle, with outbound and return sections either side. The side of the ticket corresponding to the part of the journey would be clipped. -Platform tickets (to allow access "past the barriers") had 1-12 printed along the edges. These would be clipped according to the time - they were only valid for 1 hour. -Hand written tickets did continue to exist, usually in the form of a blank destination on an Edmonton ticket. This was for those rare occurrences when someone wanted to go somewhere unusual. Also, and I feel slightly mean pointing it out, but the easier way to date the tickets is to look at the date on the ticket...
Alas, that last piece of advice is only good if the ink has not faded to badly. I recall that with a return ticket, I had to crease it in the middle to make it easier to hand over the outward porion of the ticket. It didn't always go to plan.
Your final point isn't mean, in fact it's rather foolish. The date on which the ticket was issued is of little interest. What's noteworthy is when it was manufactured. As pointed out in a comment above, some of these tickets were printed many years before the date stamped on them, to the extent that some of the station names were out of date by the time the ticket was sold.
In 1969 on the Victoria line I was issued a card ticket, which I still have, which has a brown magnetic backing, indeed it’s so strong it will actually stick to ferrous objects rather in the manner of a fridge magnet, these were used with the then new automatic ticketing equipment
@@truedarklander So does basically the entire UK rail network tbf (including the London underground, I believe, although it's far easier to use an oyster card or contactless payment); e-tickets are starting to become more commonly used nowadays, but the system default is often still the magnetic strip card tickets
@@Hannah_Em The magnetic stripe now is quite thin ..... in the 1960's the stripe covered the entire back of the ticket and ( as mentioned by Captain Codpiece , above ) was VERY strongly magnetic ...! ! .....
I too still have some of these - Edmundson sized, yellow in colour and with magnetic back. This was because the Victoria line used automated ticket gates. There were also magnetic season tickets - I remember seeing them, might even have one or two but never bought one for actual use. These tickets were longer than usual single journey tickets and I'm not sure if they were available for periods longer than weeklies (ie: 7 day).
Thanks, Jago! Just the ticket. I think that’s fare comment. You seem to have collected a few for a first class delivery. Hats off as well to TH-cam for providing the platform. As it’s that point in the evening, time to lay the table before I get ideas above my station 😆
I remember in my train spotting youth around Nth Lincolnshire, early 1960's, some country stations still issuing card tickets marked LNER, well into BR days. Thorne and Appleby (Lincs) spring to mind.
Thanks for this interesting video. I remember these tickets being issued for Brisbane suburban trains by the then Queensland Railways. They had pigeon hole boxes in front of the ticket seller where he (always he) could pick out the appropriate ticket destination for any of the lines. They must have sold very few of some varieties and very many of others! sometimes they were checked at the destination, often not.
Not directly related to the video, but as someone who grew up in Uxbridge (and now lives on the other side of the planet), it always excites me to see Uxbridge station and the other very recognizable stations between there and the Circle. 😀 So... thanks!
Very interesting. Cracking in fact! I had tickets like that when travelling from Nottm Victoria (thank you Dr Beeching for eliminating such a wonderful cathedral!!) to go trainspotting at Grantham in the mid-50s.
I rejoice that I have been able to have had my trains through Nottingham Victoria, Midland and the Great Northern one, all so close together, with its connection thro' Weekday Cross Jct. to Victoria. I feel very strange riding the tram over the Midland station where once the GC ran.
I remember taking a football special train to Nottingham for an away fixture at Forest (who won 3-2 with a very young Nigel Clough the man of the match) in September 1985. It was on two or three of our subsequent visits by car (twice to Forest,twice to County,once just for a day out somewhere different) that we had time to look around more of the city centre.
Fascinating - especially about the pre-nationalisation rail companies providing 3rd class carriages although not wanting "riff-raff" to travel with their company (sorry, Mr Fawlty). 3rd class was very much alive and well in Spain in 1971. I vividly remember travelling around Easter that year from Cerbère the station at the French frontier (Mediterranean end of the Pyrenees) on the RENFE 3rd class, past Figueres and Girona mostly inland from the cheap 'n cheerful resorts on that coast, towards Barcelona. Oh man, that was a slice of life which was seared into our innocent teenage brains. 3rd-class Catalan travellers took anything and everything with them on board (live chickens). The carriages of the train looked like something out of Wells Fargo... and I don't think the seats had any padding. We travelled 2nd class on our return, for a few pesetas more!
Going to school I had a friend who lived near Isleworth Station. In the evening when they stopped picking up tickets but left a box for used ones he would look through the box for untorn tickets and use it to go for a ride.
Ah, marvelous. Seeing you sink your teeth into the concepts of Terminus post quem and terminus ante quem (can't be before this nor after that) just makes my London loving archeologists heart leap.
I used to love the old BR pink tickets before the current Orange and Green printed credit card sized tickets became universal. Mostly they were pre printed for key destinations asked for from your station (London Waterloo, Surbiton, Guildford etc.) But then they had tickets with line that was filled in by hand. I remember these as often got them when visiting family in Derbyshire as the small local station Ambergate would hardly have been a regular request. Strangely when the APTIS orange and green card tickets came BR staff travel still issued these handwritten tickets. When I worked for SNCF's tentative operations in Manchester I lived in Hale, Trafford. A friend from the London office came to visit but staff travel issued the ticket to Hayle, Cornwall. The guards solution to this error simply use a biro to delete the y. Sometimes simple technology is easier.
I remember those too from living at Cosham, near Portsmouth. Somewhere I still have a Cosham ticket with a handwritten destination Thurso from 1981. Coast to coast the long way! It took me 3 days to get there with an overnight stop in Glasgow and a side trip up the West Highland Line and back! Incidentally I heard of someone who wanted to go to Bradford-on-Avon but got issued a ticket to Bradford by mistake. I'm sure there have been a few mixups between the two Gillinghams, various Newports/Whitchurches etc. There's even another Waterloo, on Merseyside.
The last trains in the UK with 3 classes of passengers were the boat trains on BR(SR) and ran in 1956. These trains linked with Continental geains which still had 3 classes. When the Continental railways went to 2 classes of service the 2nd Class coaches became 1st Class coaches and 3rd Class coachex became 2nd Class coaches.
I'm not sure that is quite right. As a class 4 clerk I was entitled to free travel in 2nd class on the continent and on the boat trains. By the time I was using these facilities there were new coaches for first and third class but the second class ones were old. Those in the know travelled third class on the boat trains because they were more comfortable than the second class coaches.
@@caw25sha yes, that was made up of Pullman cars for all of the years it ran. The one I'm aware of carried name boards: Continental Expres - Short Sea Route, but there would have been others as BR built 15 SO (number 3500-3514).
@@librarian16 BR built 15 Second Opens (3500-3514) for this travel. They were ordered as lot number 30053 and built at Eadtleight; all were in service in the Southern Region by 7/1953. But come 3/6/1953 when the Continental railways when to 2 classes of passenger travel the SR didn't know what to do with them. Initially they were used as 2nd class but as they had 48 seats and all other 2nd Class coaches on the SR had 64 seats they caused rostering issues. This was eventually solved by making most of them 1st Class by 1960, save for 3 that became Restaurant cars (for use with a Kitchen car). They also have the distinction of being the 1st type of Mk1 coaches to be made extinct on BR.
As a volunteer in the ticket office of the East Somerset Railway I regularly issue Edmundson tickets, 200 or more on busy days. There are two problems: setting up to the date at the beginning of the day and the inked ribbon running out. The first takes time and care inserting the individual letters and numbers. Easy when just changing the day from 22 to 23 but a fiddle when to change from 21 to 22 because of the different sizes, then the correct size blank needs to be found and inserted. The ribbon is a major problem; it is difficult to re-thread it through the machine and then you finish up with ink everywhere., and you have to switch to manually dating tickets until you have finished. Better check if the ribbon nearing its end and rewinding.
Enjoyable article. In Victoria, Australia in 1922 the Public Works Department built the grand Mt Buffalo Chalet a government owned reseort near Bright. This resort was operated by the Victorian Railways. The oddity was that Edmondson tickets had to be purchased for various services provided by the resort such as afternoon tea, the chairlift or the swimming pool etc. I don’t think they were sold through tiny windows in the wall. Another oddity was that the large picture windows had a simple balcony which was identical to the balconies on signal boxes around Victoria. That made me lol when I saw them. I have one such Mt Buffalo Chalet Edmondson ticket somewhere but I forget for what service. Sometime in the 1980s somebody questioned why was a railway department running The Chalet and that was the end of that. It was attempted to outsource it and things fell through and now the building is semi derelict and watched by Parks Victoria but they didn’t want to operate it.
@@JP_TaVeryMuch Thanks, no I didn’t know how it was in the UK, but in the 1920s there wasn’t much in tourism companies and some of these resorts would be promoted as health resorts. But railway companies were the only organizations that could cater for leisure activities as an extension to their travel business. In Victoria, in spite of the VR running The Chalet, the Bright line had no passenger service but the VR ran a bus from the junction station at Wangaratta.
Just wanted to say, I love the fact you've acquired a few cheap pasteboard tickets, applied your knowledge and some video editing skills and turned the content generated into an income stream. Kudos, sir.
You exclaim how insane it is to think of a (relatively short) rail journey costing 1d (i.e. 1/240th of a pound), but I clearly remember being sent from Cockfosters to Southgate when I was under 10 (with a shilling ...... 12d, including a 3d tip) for a haircut and the fare (for a child) was 1d.
I largely missed out on this. Being a child of 1980's Country Durham where the Beeching axe was felt far stronger than elsewhere, trains weren't somewhere one found oneself too often. In fact, investment in public transport up there was so low that I was going to secondary school on Daimler Fleetline and Leyland Atlantean buses in 1996! My god, did they rattle but they still have the same smell when I've been on preserved examples even today. The Tyne and Wear Metro had automatic ticket machines that dispensed a similar sized piece of card that allowed travel to a specific destination or a full days travel on bus and train within a certain area. What I found amazing about this was that by 1999 the machines were way past needing replacement and the writing on them was incomprehensible to anyone that didn't work for a bus or train company. I think they've changed them now.
One of the Metropolitan & Circle line ticket offices at Liverpool Street station had green card tickets where the journey was printed on them at the time of purchase. Very rare! (In those days there were at least 6 ticket offices at this station, and even today there are still are several here) Off peak return tickets were bright pink in colour and had to be torn in half with one half being given up at the end of the outward journey and the other half given up at the end of the return journey. Being very small one had to be careful to not lose the return halves! Immediately before London Transport took over the (British Railways) stations on the former LT&SR route to Upminster which were not also served by BR trains one of the ticket offices was seriously damaged by fire. The exact reason for the fire was never revealed but I've heard a story alleging that for many years there had been 'accounting irregularities' in that ticket office and since a new owner was about to take over it would have been impossible to prevent this from being discovered. So a fire ensured that there was no evidence of possible wrongdoing.
I vaguely, I think, remember these tickets from my childhood. I'm 43, so not _that_ old. If memory serves, they were using them in my corner of the world till the mid 80s. My local railway has vanished and been replaced since then, so maybe it's just garbled memories mixed up with trips on the bluebell railway!
A very good video; but in the course of it you repeated the myth that the Midland Railway was the first one to drop second class travel and concentrate on first and third classes only. They copied the idea from the Great North of Scotland Railway, which never had any second class carriages from the beginning. The story goes that the Midland's manager, Sir James Allport, on a visit to Aberdeenshire, noticed how much simpler it was to organise passenger trains if there were only two classes of accommodation, and took the idea back with him to Derby.
many years ago, I worked for a printing company in Uxbridge, called The Bell Punch Company. They printed most or all of the tickets for The London Underground. this would be 1971 when I finished my apprenticeship. I was a humble maintenance fitter.
I vividly remember these tickets in 70s & 80s on the Met line. Uxbridge was an early adopter of automatic barriers. The tickets carried information on the back on ferric oxide magnetisable coating.
I once shared pictures of a couple of bus tickets that I had tucked away with my local depot. Quick as a flash someone came up with the name and type of ticket each one was. Love an enthusiast. Now Mr Hazzard! Can we have a piece on history of ticket machines? (If you haven't already?) My early memories of the giant silver boxes with the ticket price in large letters on an illuminated panel at the top.
I didn't realise that Edmondson was a stationmaster, but I suppose that makes sense! if anyone's going to complain about laborious ticket issuing, it's likely to be a stationmaster!
Jago , On those old card tickets if you look on the back, across one end should be stamped with the date of issue date. This would show the ticket inspector if it's being used correctly!
That clipped the right holes yesterday morning at breakfast. Wellington trains use thin paper tickets for children, GoldCard holders who travel free at non-peak times and s in some other cases. Otherwise at the ticket office you can now get the usual style heavy card tickets for suburban services, the WRL and the Capital Connection which goes once daily through this town between Wellington and Palmerston North..about 150km...2 hours relaxing in the Mk2 carriages having the last couple of sturdy years running squeezed or coaxed out of them.., They're actually quite ok but the Wairarapa trains look brighter and ride smoothly.
I have to admit my main hobby is collecting tickets (since 1974). I have a ticket from the first day of opening of the LONDON and Greenwich railway in 1836. I also collect current tickets, and on Tuesday at Glasgow Central station will buy the last one I need to have a ticket from every self service ticket machine in the U.K.
DSB, the Danish national railway, still had self-serve ticket machines that would give you a cardboard ticket up until the mid 1990s or so. The machine printed the purchase time on the ticket and the ticket checkers would punch a hole in it. They were replaced by a paper printout which allowed the machines to issue more different ticket types. Nowadays physical tickets are a piece of card with a holographic strip (for security), but they're very uncommon after we got digital ticket systems
Second class did survive on boat trains (well certainly those going to the Kent Short Sea Route ports) until the 1950s to cater for people who had second class ferry tickets. Some Mk1 'boat second opens' where built alongside first and third class.
5:59 I'm "just like that". I often used to travel the long way round the Circle line just for the fun of it when I had time on my hands, when I first came to London and the Circle really was circular. I haven't done it since the Circle was extended to Hammersmith, not because of the hassle of potentially needing to change at Edgware Road, but because I seem to have much less free time these days.
@@thomasburke2683 I thought and saw 1972 Stock. I guess by 1971 any way the cheapest fare was 2d wasnt the 1.2d phased out in 1970 ? but the 6d coin remained for 2.5p. (new pence) I think by 1973 the cheapest bus fares were 2p and 3p for kids , as it effected my decision to walk and save money for sweets instead.
They were very collectible, the old style tickets. Came in a variety of colours, and you could get some very specialised variations like second class dog period returns, or third class workmen's weekly tickets (available only before 7 a.m. except on Fridays)
Edmondson was born in Lancaster. For many years, one of his ticket machines was on display in the booking hall at Lancaster (Castle) Station. I think it is now in the City Museum.
I could never understand as a child how the man in the peaked cap used to check the tickets of those leaving the station during the rush hour. There were so many people! I wish I'd kept my tickets as a youngster.
My season ticket from West Hampstead to Uxbridge in 1979 was London Transport ticket - I recall that it said 2nd class Working in Paris in 1974 -76 was 2nd class as most Metro trains had a 1st class car in the middle. Feel so sad that young British citizens can no longer study or work in Paris without massive bureaucracy. Our generation will be remembered as the betrayers of future generations young people, even though most of London voted 70% to remain
Must have been great when the Metropolitan went all the way to Aylesbury with steam. As train spotter in 60s I remember as a youngster Metro electric locomotives pulling trains from Harrow on the Hill to Baker Street, lovely Met Rly rolling stock
Who would have known when that ticket from Aldgate was sold that one could can now chose to exit from Liverpool Street or Moorgate within the same station complex. Spooky! I keep old tickets sometimes, the oldest being from 1976. I also have one for the Wuppertaler Schwebebahn, a 10p Tube ticket, a twice-clipped return from Bromley South to Canterbury East for £3.30, and the inaugural Network Day card from 21 June 1986 that cost £1 and saw us to Canterbury, London, Chichester and Brighton.
Edmondson tickets, gone the way of post boxes on railway carriages (supplement 1/2d), automatic shoe shine machines, and those devices that printed out metal luggage tags and made the user look like an extra in the film Metropolis. Clipping of Edmondson tickets wasn't always straightforward. Sometimes a guard (pre-"ticket inspector") would study it like a piece of the Dead Sea Scrolls, claiming the ticket had been punched too often or not enough for the journey undertaken, and demand restitution. You may get it clipped after every mainline station en route till it resembled filigree, or not at all with the inspector turning up his nose as if it wasn't worth his time getting involved in its complexities.
Talking tickets... When did those ticket machines that you used to see at tube stations with 4d, 6d, 9d, 1/- etc displayed on them disappear from Tube stations. Each machine would have a list of stations clearly displayed on each one. That would be the single ticket price to them from whichever station they were situated in. They were generally floor standing and about four feet tall either light blue or silver grey. Busy stations had whole rows of them.
Free train travel in Sydney for next 3 weeks due to industrial action too lol. It has made the roads far less clogged :). People are still ''expected' to pay of course but there won't be any checking of tickets anywhere on the network. i feel sorry for anyone who bought a monthly ticket. Sadly it does not cover country link and interstate train services lol.
I did enjoy this video. It's a fun game to play on a visit to a heritage line to buy old tickets and note through all the details. I have various ones in my possession along with other "Ephemera". Old stocks were sometimes a long while in using up as you wouldn't bother printing new tickets for every company name change or station name change. For many years the Railway Magazine would have occasional letters from people issued a ticket for a journey which was a relic of decades before. (Their archive is both great value and great fun). Sadly such fun and games was stopped when we ceased to use the Edmondson tickets. In Secret Seven it is noted that few hobbies were more cherished and more exasperating than collecting tickets, as you were supposed to hand them over at the end of your trip for accounting. I do wonder if the railway clearing house staff ever supplied eager boys with accounted for tickets as presents.
I thought that. It is backwards though, which is a bit odd. Also visible from the other side, so could be a mirror image but then the N would be back-to-front. The one at 4:10 says 25AP30 (25 April 1930), which contradicts Jago's assertion that it must be pre-1922 because of Farringdon. Maybe the pre-printed tickets didn't update promptly with the station name, especially as it's close?
@@stephenholt4670 exactly. Edmondson tickets were printed in batches of 250. Often a booking clerk might order a thousand. Just because of a station name change or other minor technicality, was no reason to waste a valuable asset.
@@stephenholt4670 Yes, the ticket was pushed end-first into a date-stamping press when issued. The ticket needs to be turned so the dated end is at the top in order to read the date. They probably didn't bother to reprint the ticket stock when Farringdon Street was renamed since it was just a routing and not a destination, so there would be less likelihood of confusion.
After a not so hard evening driving a bus here, it was nice to come home open a bottle of wine (well had enough beer last Friday at the Gbbf) sit on the sofa and watch another excellent episode, especially a tale from the Met... It was.... Just the ticket 😂😅😆😃😀🙂😏😐🙄 I'll get my coat.... Greetings from the Vienna woods... Well done sir 😊👍🏽
Down at Corfe Castle station they have a working ticket printing machine in their museum, which I was privileged to see in operation a few months ago. It's usually kept safely locked away.
Great vid:) Loved the mention of the lines carrying parcels. I've just moved to Peckham and have been familiarising myself with the current proposals to redevelop Peckham Rye station. Network Rail have some great info online including a chronology of the station and right there on the old old building plans...a parcel room and loading bay...was confused when I first seen it but makes sense now! Recommend a look into the history of Peckham Rye station as well as the plans, which are pretty big in terms of redevelopment plans. The station, and formerly bricked up iron staircase are really beautiful, along with the former waiting room. In addition a billiards club was successfully run in the building for a number of years! Now the old station square is to the brought back, resulting in the demolition of an existing, operational but very neglected arcade building which hems the station into a narrow, ill-suited alley out the back and will return what is a very handsome station back to having frontage onto Rye Lane again.
I remember these old tickets going through the date stamp machine and this made me feel old as I recall Aldersgate station. A helpful hint about the old money: 1 1/2d was either A penny ha'penny or three ha'pence. One and a half pence only came in with decimalisation. Good detective work with the tickets though.
Yes, I noticed that mistake. Jago is enjoying the detective work that he does to date the tickets. That little error dates him! He must be too young to remember what people called various prices in pre-decimal days. Quite a lot of everyday things would have cost three halfpence (pronounced 'haypence') or a penny halfpeny (also pronounced 'haypenny'), not to mention 'thripence', 'sixpence', a shilling, half a crown, five bob, ten bob, etc. Language dates as much as anything. As an oldie nowadays I am often completely flummoxed by some modern idiom that is quite new to me. What on earth does it mean to say something 'is a thing'? I've worked it out now, but you won't find it in any dictionary, yet.
@@orglancs There were also "Guineas" which I don't think were actual coins (well, maybe in the 17th Century they were). A Guinea was 21 shillings and was usually the price quoted for goods in posh shops. It finally went out with decimalisation. Five bob was a Crown. When the proposed changeover to the smaller 10p piece was announced in 1992, a lot of King George VI florins (2 shilling coins) suddenly appeared in circulation. Looks like a lot of people didn't want to be caught out with coins that would no longer use coin operated vending machines. Speaking of vending machines, the New Zealand 20 cent coin was reduced in size in 2006 as apparently the original 1967 size coin was being used in vending machines in Australia and the U.K. instead of the more valuable local 20 cent or 10p coins, as the 1967 design was the same size as these two.
3:25 Parliamentary trains are mentioned by the titular character in Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan's 'The Mikado': 'The idiot who in railway carriages scribbles on window-panes, We only suffer to ride on a buffer in parliamentary trains...' The lack of comfort on said trains was presumably part of the joke.
I miss the old tickets I love a bit of nostalgia and the only way I can get my fix of getting my ticket punched is going on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway 🚂🚂 Great video Jago as always.
Bayswater and Praed SDtreet were not part of the District Railway 100 years ago. The metropolitan ran all the way to South Kensington. The District only got as far as High St Kensington. It was only after 1933 that District trains ran beyond HSK.
I used to catch the train from aheffield to London or London to Sheffield daily, and the ticket would be ink stamped so lick you finger just before passing the ticket then when you are passed it back wipe the ink off it I used the same down ticket for about a month, yes I have a valid ticket as well but I got board and you have to play these games lol
I love a bit of technology that was unthinkable before its invention and blindingly obvious afterwards. Standard rail tickets in Japan still follow the Edmondson format and the barrier gates do the clipping.
When I was a young lad (c. 1950), I had thought that I'd like to be a ticket office clerk. That was because at my local station was a gentleman who had a most distictive way of inserting the ticket into the date stamper. That fascinated me for a long time. Now I haven't thought about that in a very long time. You're to blame. You have unboxed a memory of mine.
As a child I recall the cylindrical date stamp machine into which the clerk thrust said ticket in (rather forcefully) and with impressive dexterity spun the ticket around to repeat the process on the other end. Most impressive.
Now the preserve of the heritage railways, but still, fond memories. Not to mention, a souvenir of ones trip to the seaside!
Here in Croatia, Edmondson tickets were phased out somewhere around the mid-2000s, while in Serbia they were still in use in late 2012.
When I was younger, one of the sounds unavoidably associated with the railways was the sound of the stamp hitting the ticket. If you were to catch an earlier train, you could hear the clerk stamping the date on dozens (or hundreds) of tickets like a machine.
Another lovely facet on your video gem of historical railway. I can recall using those tickets in my young boyhood. Even the unique sound
made as the clerk slipped them out of their housing at the ticket window. Sometimes they had to be stamped. But it was never done by a
simple press of a stamp. It was quite theatrical. The clerk would ink the stamp on the stamp pad, BAM BAM BAM, then line up the ticket,
bringing the stamp down with a KERTHUMP! It convinced me that the ticket clerk was indeed an important part of the railway system!
As a young lad in the early 50's I used to go to school on the then Bakerloo line from Willesden Green. No free travel for kids back then. My 'child's' fare was a penny ha'penny and I remember asking the booking clerk for 'a penny ha'penny half please' - very confusing now. Automatic ticketing was being introduced at that time and near the end of the cardboard tickets the station had run out of pre-printed child tickets of that value so I was issued with an adult 3d (old thrupence) which the booking clerk then cut in half diagonally to create a penny ha'penny ticket!! Very creative!
I would then walk the three paces to the ticket barrier (where the very old sign read 'All tickets must be shewn' - note the spelling - and the ticket inspector would punch a hole in it to prevent it being re-used.
No wonder the queues for tickets would be snaking out of the station during rush hours, especially on Mondays when weekly tickets were issued as well......happy days
When my brother and I went with our parents on a train journey, invariably the clerk would stamp 3 adult returns and cut one diagonally for the 'two little ones'. I assumed it was standard practice to do that. Only occasionally would I be given a proper child's ticket.
@@roboftherock Yes, diagonal cut was standard practice for any half-fare journeys which didn't have their own dedicated child ticket. Some of the ticket information was printed twice on adult tickets so it would be legible on both halves.
Not trains i lnow, but in the early 1970s the LT child bus fare in my part of London was 2p except during the rush hour when adult fares were charged - 10p for the same journey to school.
So many memories stirred by this video. I trained as a booking clerk on London Underground in 1985. I worked solely with Edmonson Card tickets until the new fangled UTS equipment started being installed from 1987(?). In the 7 years I had in the ticket office I worked at every Met station except Ickenham and Uxbridge.
Happy days!
Funny how things come back to you. I have vague memories when, as a child I was taken on train journeys the ticket office at stations would issue small cardboard tickets from a small window with a curved top, and the loud (and rather satisfying) CLUNK as the details of the journey were printed. Also, the old railway parcels service was exceptional. My father was a rep for an agricultural medicines firm for many years, orders were taken and delivery was by rail, every village had a manned station, sometimes two! For urgent orders, if the order was phoned through to head office before "close of play" someone would pack it, and walk across the road to the station (Wellington in Somerset) and put it on the next train. Many's the time, the station mistress who lived next door would bring a parcel up for him before breakfast the next morning. Still, those were the days of two postal deliveries per day, and a "bobby" in every village.
Not 'a penny and a half' but 'a penny ha'penny'. Great episode. I was born in Praed Street in 1941 so this is all very interesting for me. Keep up the good work and thanks.
Or three ha'pence.
I remember this style of ticket. They used to issue them on BR Southern Region right up to the mid 1980's.. When doing a long distance journey the guard checking the tickets North of London would often make a comment about these old style Southern Region tickets.
My dad was a booking office clerk with BR ...when u have a queue at a stn booking office it can be hard work issuing these tickets. I think BR replaced these with Aptis machines.
I used to look at the clipped edge of tickets on a long journey as often would be clipped 5 or 6 times by different guards always on the same edge, by the end of a journey the clips formed an intriguing pattern as all the clippers cut a different shaped clip, The management knew which guards had or had not been checking tickets on a particular train.
@@watchmakersp9935 aptis machines appeared when network southeast was formed, or thereabouts
@@Keithbarber I know when I travelled to the midlands after the great storm of 1987 I got one of these handwritten tickets. But by the time the Capitalcard (The travelcard with return travel to out of zone stations in Network SouthEast albeit SouthEast included Honiton and Worcester)
I remember the cheapest ticket price being 10p in the 80s on those pillar-like,sloping-topped stand-up ticket machines we made use of in the hall one floor below the big main station concourse and platforms at Euston,and on the same level as the ticket barriers in front of the second (of three) level escalators down to the Northern and Victoria line platforms.
Some more fun facts about Edmondson tickets. Bound bundles are numbered in reverse order, i.e. the lowest number is at the "back" of the bundle. This is because they are loaded vertically face up into the dispenser (known as an Edmondson Drop Tube) so the "back" is now at the "bottom" and the lowest numbered ticket will be removed by the booking clerk first.
The AM42 on the Aldgate ticket indicates it would have been sold from booking window 42. It was common for each individual booking window at a busy station to have its own ticket series. Obviously Aldgate didn't have 42 windows but the numbering was often inconsistent so is probably something like station number 4, booking window number 2. Likewise the Moorgate ticket was issued from booking window number 1.
The Moorgate ticket may be over 100 years old but is date stamped 25AP30, so they were obviously still using up old ticket stock long after Farringdon Street was renamed in 1922. It's also notable the destination is to Baker Street, Edgware Rd, Paddington or Bayswater which was a common way of saving on printing and space by having multiple destinations which had the same fare.
The Aldersgate Street ticket is date stamped 11NO10 (11th November 1910) which is 9 days after it was renamed.
The St John's Wood Road ticket is date stamped 17DE07.
I love this topic! Many years ago, I was given a pocket bible that had belonged to my great-great uncle. I found a few things between the pages including a couple of pressed flowers, a small piece of paper with some writing on it, and a transfer ticket for Boston's West End Street Railway Company, dated January 15, [18]91.
The Edmondson ticket is a brilliant invention, very much like the postage stamp, at about the same time. Seems absolutely obvious, once someone has made it happen: until this moment, I had never realised it had an inventor. Long ago (early '60s) I had a vacation job with British Rail, and was in it long enough to be entitled to concessional fares, which under some circumstances covered the Underground. I remember a poor ticket clerk at Tottenham Court Road having to write out a ticket by hand for a fare for me.
incredible how much history and information you got out of three little pieces of card
Good detective work using powers of deduction.
With all that deduction, I just knew that there would be a ticket to Baker Street.
Used to both like and hate those tickets when a return ticket, at one's destination on the outward journey the ticket collecter at the barrier would tear the ticket in half, keep the outward part and hand back the now small return half. On one's return journey many minutes would often be spent retrieving it from a corner of a pocket, people behind muttering under their breath at one delaying the queue at the barrier.
Although the Metropolitan may have ‘gone’ in 1933, their tickets would have been used until the supply was exhausted which for the more obscure destinations or types could probably meant quite a few years depending on whether LT decided to reissue everything. I’m aware that as an example that some of the LBSCR tickets were still in the ‘Racks’ at places like Pulborough into the late 1950s , so well over 25 years after that company had been absorbed into the Southern Railway.
The British Rail owned Humber Ferry ,which closed with the opening of the Humber Bridge in 1981 still had an LNER Edmonson ticket in occasional use well into the 1970s .It was a permit issued during times of Ferry service disruption ,to allow the holder to travel by train vice ferry via either Doncaster or Retford .
@@Eurobrasil550
Talk about a long road for a short cut. A quick trip to the shops in Hull would have taken half a day when that happened
Again, never a disappointment! Your lack of in depth research is a most modest statement Jago. Captivating stuff. I just still don’t begin to fathom how you churn out so much content with such in-depth insight. I don’t even know of anyone out there discrediting any information you’ve given. It is truly astounding, and so much more wholesome than watching Instagram reels of people giving out $$$ to random people for clicks. All power to you and your insatiable quest for knowledge. Thank you sir! 👏
I love the scholarship and arcane knowledge you demonstrate in dating a piece of railroad ephemera. As an afficionado of little-known artifacts of television technical history, it inspires me to ever-greater nerdy depths of research. Though my most recent experience with the Underground is now 40+ years old, I really enjoy your breezy commentary on its even earlier history and your intimate knowledge of places I'll likely never see in person. Thank you!
Interesting stuff! I read that the Railway Clearing House used to gather up all the collected tickets and decide what the railway companies owed each other. That would be a good topic for a video.
I think they would use the register count of ticket sales for the balancing up
@@JP_TaVeryMuch I have seen similar too, seems a strange way unless they are the write in odd station ones.
@@highpath4776 Probably too easy to cheat the system. Using collected ticket/stubs would be verifiable proof.
In my two visits to London in the Fifties and Sixties, I was intrigued by having to give the little ticket to a man when exiting. Buying tickets was also interesting. A vending machine with buttons labeled for all the destinations. You put in coins and pushed the proper button, and out popped a ticket! What will they think of next.
@@JP_TaVeryMuch The building still exists - it's on Eversholt Street and in BR days it was called Eversholt House; if you walk along the road from the Euston station end, it's on the left, it starts opposite a church and just keeps going until the next entry.
As you said, it was huge; I'm not sure when BR stopped using it (I worked in it in the late 1960s), and I think at one time it held the HQ of Sealink
I miss those old tickets. Far more interesting than the bland oyster card, and the samey yellow-striped job we get on every railway journey.
All my years of using the railway service I never knew all these little stories surrounding these stations. I now have a new-found appreciation for it. Thanks Jago! :)
Those were the tickets that actually fitted into the ticket pocket in your Levis. Simple pleasures.
I regret turning up the chance to buy a North Staffordshire Rly, ticket punch. i loved those little palm-held clippers.
@@johnjephcote7636 - See my recent comment ref. those!
I have a small collection of old tickets. One is for Liverpool Street to Bishopsgate, date stamped 1899 and for 1d.(penny that is). when I worked in the City in the 60's I went to the barrier at Liverpool St. and asked the chap on duty what platform the Bishopsgate trains departed from. The Bishopsgate station had closed many years ago. He looked at the ticket and came out with a stream of cliches (no swearing, mind)- "Well, bless my soul, Good Lord, I can't believe it, well I never", were just a few. Good entertainment for my lunch break!
I thought Bishopsgate was closed after Liverpool St was opened.
@@caw25sha Indeed and interesting if there was a passenger ticket for that trip , maybe there was an overlap. Did Davil mean Aldersgate ? or was the ticket having both stations on it as the fare was the same and they were ordering tickets in advance ?
@@highpath4776 The ticket definitely says Liverpool Street to Bishopsgate.
I used to use Edmonton machines when a volunteer at the Bluebell. A couple of things worth mentioning:
-The tickets are numbered sequentially, to facilitate tallying up at the end of the day. Looking at the last number of the ticket from the end of the day and subtracting end of day number of yesterday you know how many tickets are sold. In a pre-calculator, pre-decimalisation era, this must have been quite a feat of mathemematics
-Return tickets (usually) had a line down the middle, with outbound and return sections either side. The side of the ticket corresponding to the part of the journey would be clipped.
-Platform tickets (to allow access "past the barriers") had 1-12 printed along the edges. These would be clipped according to the time - they were only valid for 1 hour.
-Hand written tickets did continue to exist, usually in the form of a blank destination on an Edmonton ticket. This was for those rare occurrences when someone wanted to go somewhere unusual.
Also, and I feel slightly mean pointing it out, but the easier way to date the tickets is to look at the date on the ticket...
Alas, that last piece of advice is only good if the ink has not faded to badly. I recall that with a return ticket, I had to crease it in the middle to make it easier to hand over the outward porion of the ticket. It didn't always go to plan.
Your final point isn't mean, in fact it's rather foolish. The date on which the ticket was issued is of little interest. What's noteworthy is when it was manufactured. As pointed out in a comment above, some of these tickets were printed many years before the date stamped on them, to the extent that some of the station names were out of date by the time the ticket was sold.
I love the detective work done here, figuring out approximately when the tickets were issued.
Sorta like riding the Circle line the long way around instead of just looking at the date printed on the ticket.
In 1969 on the Victoria line I was issued a card ticket, which I still have, which has a brown magnetic backing, indeed it’s so strong it will actually stick to ferrous objects rather in the manner of a fridge magnet, these were used with the then new automatic ticketing equipment
The Caracas metro still uses card and magnetic strip tickets
@@truedarklander So does basically the entire UK rail network tbf (including the London underground, I believe, although it's far easier to use an oyster card or contactless payment); e-tickets are starting to become more commonly used nowadays, but the system default is often still the magnetic strip card tickets
@@Hannah_Em The magnetic stripe now is quite thin ..... in the 1960's the stripe covered the entire back of the ticket and ( as mentioned by Captain Codpiece , above ) was VERY strongly magnetic ...! ! .....
I too still have some of these - Edmundson sized, yellow in colour and with magnetic back. This was because the Victoria line used automated ticket gates.
There were also magnetic season tickets - I remember seeing them, might even have one or two but never bought one for actual use. These tickets were longer than usual single journey tickets and I'm not sure if they were available for periods longer than weeklies (ie: 7 day).
@@Hannah_Em that's crazy, in Lisbon it's all electronic cards
Thanks, Jago! Just the ticket. I think that’s fare comment. You seem to have collected a few for a first class delivery. Hats off as well to TH-cam for providing the platform. As it’s that point in the evening, time to lay the table before I get ideas above my station 😆
Fares fair...
You didn't think of showing us the clips of tickets in the clips of film
@@nicomonkeyboy As the GLC said,to the annoyance of the Thatcher government,in the early-to-mid 80s.
I find myself siding with the OP's comment.
I remember in my train spotting youth around Nth Lincolnshire, early 1960's, some country stations still issuing card tickets marked LNER, well into BR days. Thorne and Appleby (Lincs) spring to mind.
Thanks for this interesting video. I remember these tickets being issued for Brisbane suburban trains by the then Queensland Railways. They had pigeon hole boxes in front of the ticket seller where he (always he) could pick out the appropriate ticket destination for any of the lines. They must have sold very few of some varieties and very many of others! sometimes they were checked at the destination, often not.
Not directly related to the video, but as someone who grew up in Uxbridge (and now lives on the other side of the planet), it always excites me to see Uxbridge station and the other very recognizable stations between there and the Circle. 😀 So... thanks!
Very interesting. Cracking in fact! I had tickets like that when travelling from Nottm Victoria (thank you Dr Beeching for eliminating such a wonderful cathedral!!) to go trainspotting at Grantham in the mid-50s.
I rejoice that I have been able to have had my trains through Nottingham Victoria, Midland and the Great Northern one, all so close together, with its connection thro' Weekday Cross Jct. to Victoria. I feel very strange riding the tram over the Midland station where once the GC ran.
I remember taking a football special train to Nottingham for an away fixture at Forest (who won 3-2 with a very young Nigel Clough the man of the match) in September 1985. It was on two or three of our subsequent visits by car (twice to Forest,twice to County,once just for a day out somewhere different) that we had time to look around more of the city centre.
You should have shown the ticket endorsing machine,'thump, thump' it would go. I think Puffing Billy still uses those tickets.
I was born in the early seventies. Those huge disposing machines were fantastic. But looked like mad robots in my kiddy mind.
Anybody who doesn't know the name changes of these stations just hasn't been paying attention. Another fine video.
Fascinating - especially about the pre-nationalisation rail companies providing 3rd class carriages although not wanting "riff-raff" to travel with their company (sorry, Mr Fawlty). 3rd class was very much alive and well in Spain in 1971. I vividly remember travelling around Easter that year from Cerbère the station at the French frontier (Mediterranean end of the Pyrenees) on the RENFE 3rd class, past Figueres and Girona mostly inland from the cheap 'n cheerful resorts on that coast, towards Barcelona. Oh man, that was a slice of life which was seared into our innocent teenage brains. 3rd-class Catalan travellers took anything and everything with them on board (live chickens). The carriages of the train looked like something out of Wells Fargo... and I don't think the seats had any padding. We travelled 2nd class on our return, for a few pesetas more!
That was just the ticket for the weekend to start! it was actually very interesting to hear all about them! Thank you very much 😊😉👏👏👏👏👌
Going to school I had a friend who lived near Isleworth Station. In the evening when they stopped picking up tickets but left a box for used ones he would look through the box for untorn tickets and use it to go for a ride.
Ah, marvelous. Seeing you sink your teeth into the concepts of Terminus post quem and terminus ante quem (can't be before this nor after that) just makes my London loving archeologists heart leap.
I used to love the old BR pink tickets before the current Orange and Green printed credit card sized tickets became universal. Mostly they were pre printed for key destinations asked for from your station (London Waterloo, Surbiton, Guildford etc.) But then they had tickets with line that was filled in by hand. I remember these as often got them when visiting family in Derbyshire as the small local station Ambergate would hardly have been a regular request. Strangely when the APTIS orange and green card tickets came BR staff travel still issued these handwritten tickets. When I worked for SNCF's tentative operations in Manchester I lived in Hale, Trafford. A friend from the London office came to visit but staff travel issued the ticket to Hayle, Cornwall. The guards solution to this error simply use a biro to delete the y. Sometimes simple technology is easier.
I remember those too from living at Cosham, near Portsmouth. Somewhere I still have a Cosham ticket with a handwritten destination Thurso from 1981. Coast to coast the long way! It took me 3 days to get there with an overnight stop in Glasgow and a side trip up the West Highland Line and back! Incidentally I heard of someone who wanted to go to Bradford-on-Avon but got issued a ticket to Bradford by mistake. I'm sure there have been a few mixups between the two Gillinghams, various Newports/Whitchurches etc. There's even another Waterloo, on Merseyside.
The last trains in the UK with 3 classes of passengers were the boat trains on BR(SR) and ran in 1956. These trains linked with Continental geains which still had 3 classes. When the Continental railways went to 2 classes of service the 2nd Class coaches became 1st Class coaches and 3rd Class coachex became 2nd Class coaches.
Presumably not including the Golden Arrow which I think was 1st only?
I'm not sure that is quite right. As a class 4 clerk I was entitled to free travel in 2nd class on the continent and on the boat trains. By the time I was using these facilities there were new coaches for first and third class but the second class ones were old. Those in the know travelled third class on the boat trains because they were more comfortable than the second class coaches.
@@caw25sha yes, that was made up of Pullman cars for all of the years it ran. The one I'm aware of carried name boards: Continental Expres - Short Sea Route, but there would have been others as BR built 15 SO (number 3500-3514).
@@librarian16 BR built 15 Second Opens (3500-3514) for this travel. They were ordered as lot number 30053 and built at Eadtleight; all were in service in the Southern Region by 7/1953. But come 3/6/1953 when the Continental railways when to 2 classes of passenger travel the SR didn't know what to do with them. Initially they were used as 2nd class but as they had 48 seats and all other 2nd Class coaches on the SR had 64 seats they caused rostering issues. This was eventually solved by making most of them 1st Class by 1960, save for 3 that became Restaurant cars (for use with a Kitchen car). They also have the distinction of being the 1st type of Mk1 coaches to be made extinct on BR.
"Penny and a half?" Penny ha'penny (pronounced penny haypenny) young Jago my lad! (Or even penny ape knee I seem to recall).
Or three ha'pence.(Pronounced three haypence.)
@@jerribee1 Yes! I'd forgotten that variation 😀
@@jerribee1 the confusing one,, hapence three farthings for 1 1/4d
@@jerribee1 Or thruppence? Oops! Just realized my mistake so an edit is in order as I don't think I can delete a comment.
God I must be getting old, I remember being albe to buy sweets for an 'ape knee' 😅
As a volunteer in the ticket office of the East Somerset Railway I regularly issue Edmundson tickets, 200 or more on busy days. There are two problems: setting up to the date at the beginning of the day and the inked ribbon running out.
The first takes time and care inserting the individual letters and numbers. Easy when just changing the day from 22 to 23 but a fiddle when to change from 21 to 22 because of the different sizes, then the correct size blank needs to be found and inserted.
The ribbon is a major problem; it is difficult to re-thread it through the machine and then you finish up with ink everywhere., and you have to switch to manually dating tickets until you have finished. Better check if the ribbon nearing its end and rewinding.
Enjoyable article. In Victoria, Australia in 1922 the Public Works Department built the grand Mt Buffalo Chalet a government owned reseort near Bright. This resort was operated by the Victorian Railways. The oddity was that Edmondson tickets had to be purchased for various services provided by the resort such as afternoon tea, the chairlift or the swimming pool etc. I don’t think they were sold through tiny windows in the wall.
Another oddity was that the large picture windows had a simple balcony which was identical to the balconies on signal boxes around Victoria. That made me lol when I saw them.
I have one such Mt Buffalo Chalet Edmondson ticket somewhere but I forget for what service.
Sometime in the 1980s somebody questioned why was a railway department running The Chalet and that was the end of that. It was attempted to outsource it and things fell through and now the building is semi derelict and watched by Parks Victoria but they didn’t want to operate it.
@@JP_TaVeryMuch Thanks, no I didn’t know how it was in the UK, but in the 1920s there wasn’t much in tourism companies and some of these resorts would be promoted as health resorts. But railway companies were the only organizations that could cater for leisure activities as an extension to their travel business.
In Victoria, in spite of the VR running The Chalet, the Bright line had no passenger service but the VR ran a bus from the junction station at Wangaratta.
No doubt you travelled to Bright on a DERM built by Walkers of Wigan.
When did VR discontinue rail passenger services to Bright?
@@thomasburke2683 I read the passenger train to Bright ended in 1952.
Just wanted to say, I love the fact you've acquired a few cheap pasteboard tickets, applied your knowledge and some video editing skills and turned the content generated into an income stream.
Kudos, sir.
You exclaim how insane it is to think of a (relatively short) rail journey costing 1d (i.e. 1/240th of a pound), but I clearly remember being sent from Cockfosters to Southgate when I was under 10 (with a shilling ...... 12d, including a 3d tip) for a haircut and the fare (for a child) was 1d.
I largely missed out on this. Being a child of 1980's Country Durham where the Beeching axe was felt far stronger than elsewhere, trains weren't somewhere one found oneself too often. In fact, investment in public transport up there was so low that I was going to secondary school on Daimler Fleetline and Leyland Atlantean buses in 1996! My god, did they rattle but they still have the same smell when I've been on preserved examples even today. The Tyne and Wear Metro had automatic ticket machines that dispensed a similar sized piece of card that allowed travel to a specific destination or a full days travel on bus and train within a certain area. What I found amazing about this was that by 1999 the machines were way past needing replacement and the writing on them was incomprehensible to anyone that didn't work for a bus or train company. I think they've changed them now.
One of the Metropolitan & Circle line ticket offices at Liverpool Street station had green card tickets where the journey was printed on them at the time of purchase. Very rare! (In those days there were at least 6 ticket offices at this station, and even today there are still are several here)
Off peak return tickets were bright pink in colour and had to be torn in half with one half being given up at the end of the outward journey and the other half given up at the end of the return journey. Being very small one had to be careful to not lose the return halves!
Immediately before London Transport took over the (British Railways) stations on the former LT&SR route to Upminster which were not also served by BR trains one of the ticket offices was seriously damaged by fire. The exact reason for the fire was never revealed but I've heard a story alleging that for many years there had been 'accounting irregularities' in that ticket office and since a new owner was about to take over it would have been impossible to prevent this from being discovered. So a fire ensured that there was no evidence of possible wrongdoing.
Super close reading of tickets! I don't generally watch unboxing videos, but if more were this good I would.
I vaguely, I think, remember these tickets from my childhood. I'm 43, so not _that_ old. If memory serves, they were using them in my corner of the world till the mid 80s. My local railway has vanished and been replaced since then, so maybe it's just garbled memories mixed up with trips on the bluebell railway!
I think you’re right. Old-style tickets were still in use round my way in the mid-eighties, until the APTIS system came in.
A very good video; but in the course of it you repeated the myth that the Midland Railway was the first one to drop second class travel and concentrate on first and third classes only. They copied the idea from the Great North of Scotland Railway, which never had any second class carriages from the beginning. The story goes that the Midland's manager, Sir James Allport, on a visit to Aberdeenshire, noticed how much simpler it was to organise passenger trains if there were only two classes of accommodation, and took the idea back with him to Derby.
Jago been real quiet since this dropped
many years ago, I worked for a printing company in Uxbridge, called The Bell Punch Company. They printed most or all of the tickets for The London Underground. this would be 1971 when I finished my apprenticeship. I was a humble maintenance fitter.
I vividly remember these tickets in 70s & 80s on the Met line. Uxbridge was an early adopter of automatic barriers. The tickets carried information on the back on ferric oxide magnetisable coating.
Very interesting tale from the tube. Those tickets contain so much history. Lovely find Jago 👏👏👍😀
I once shared pictures of a couple of bus tickets that I had tucked away with my local depot. Quick as a flash someone came up with the name and type of ticket each one was. Love an enthusiast.
Now Mr Hazzard! Can we have a piece on history of ticket machines? (If you haven't already?) My early memories of the giant silver boxes with the ticket price in large letters on an illuminated panel at the top.
I didn't realise that Edmondson was a stationmaster, but I suppose that makes sense! if anyone's going to complain about laborious ticket issuing, it's likely to be a stationmaster!
Jago , On those old card tickets if you look on the back, across one end should be stamped with the date of issue date. This would show the ticket inspector if it's being used correctly!
If you can read the date that should solve the puzzle. Though I think some early (pre-LT) ones only had a 1-digit year on them.
Not just 1980s in Britain - at least 1990 when I was issued with them to travel for work!
That clipped the right holes yesterday morning at breakfast. Wellington trains use thin paper tickets for children, GoldCard holders who travel free at non-peak times and s
in some other cases. Otherwise at the ticket office you can now get the usual style heavy card tickets for suburban services, the WRL and the Capital Connection which goes once daily through this town between Wellington and Palmerston North..about 150km...2 hours relaxing in the Mk2 carriages having the last couple of sturdy years running squeezed or coaxed out of them.., They're actually quite ok but the Wairarapa trains look brighter and ride smoothly.
I have to admit my main hobby is collecting tickets (since 1974). I have a ticket from the first day of opening of the LONDON and Greenwich railway in 1836. I also collect current tickets, and on Tuesday at Glasgow Central station will buy the last one I need to have a ticket from every self service ticket machine in the U.K.
Hand written tickets were still a thing on BR for long journeys with multiple connections well into the 1970s and possibly even later than that.
Certainly into the 1980s on LT.
They are still used for Sail & Rail tickets, although a different variety
And also the handwritten paper tickets issued by guards on trains for various reasons.
It was so nice to see the vintage documents. Thank you!
DSB, the Danish national railway, still had self-serve ticket machines that would give you a cardboard ticket up until the mid 1990s or so. The machine printed the purchase time on the ticket and the ticket checkers would punch a hole in it. They were replaced by a paper printout which allowed the machines to issue more different ticket types. Nowadays physical tickets are a piece of card with a holographic strip (for security), but they're very uncommon after we got digital ticket systems
Second class did survive on boat trains (well certainly those going to the Kent Short Sea Route ports) until the 1950s to cater for people who had second class ferry tickets. Some Mk1 'boat second opens' where built alongside first and third class.
5:59 I'm "just like that". I often used to travel the long way round the Circle line just for the fun of it when I had time on my hands, when I first came to London and the Circle really was circular. I haven't done it since the Circle was extended to Hammersmith, not because of the hassle of potentially needing to change at Edgware Road, but because I seem to have much less free time these days.
That was just the ticket, old boy. 1½d pronounced penny-haip'nie. 1972 and all that!
sometimes the price might be asked for as three hap/pence.
Radio Jonophone,
Your year is a little out.
Decimalisation day was 15 February 1971.
@@thomasburke2683 I thought and saw 1972 Stock. I guess by 1971 any way the cheapest fare was 2d wasnt the 1.2d phased out in 1970 ? but the 6d coin remained for 2.5p. (new pence) I think by 1973 the cheapest bus fares were 2p and 3p for kids , as it effected my decision to walk and save money for sweets instead.
@@thomasburke2683 Yes, I was there. Silly me, memory plays tricks when you're old. Oops!
They were very collectible, the old style tickets. Came in a variety of colours, and you could get some very specialised variations like second class dog period returns, or third class workmen's weekly tickets (available only before 7 a.m. except on Fridays)
Edmondson was born in Lancaster. For many years, one of his ticket machines was on display in the booking hall at Lancaster (Castle) Station. I think it is now in the City Museum.
I could never understand as a child how the man in the peaked cap used to check the tickets of those leaving the station during the rush hour. There were so many people! I wish I'd kept my tickets as a youngster.
My season ticket from West Hampstead to Uxbridge in 1979 was London Transport ticket - I recall that it said 2nd class
Working in Paris in 1974 -76 was 2nd class as most Metro trains had a 1st class car in the middle. Feel so sad that young British citizens can no longer study or work in Paris without massive bureaucracy. Our generation will be remembered as the betrayers of future generations young people, even though most of London voted 70% to remain
Must have been great when the Metropolitan went all the way to Aylesbury with steam. As train spotter in 60s I remember as a youngster Metro electric locomotives pulling trains from Harrow on the Hill to Baker Street, lovely Met Rly rolling stock
Great video Jago and very informative indeed, just the ticket in fact
Uxbridge has to my of my favourite stations. Somehow makes concrete look so beautiful. And it has a grand entrance with the flaming wheels
Excellent video, great addition to the channel. I though it was a good way to bind the content together & give it another purpose.
Who would have known when that ticket from Aldgate was sold that one could can now chose to exit from Liverpool Street or Moorgate within the same station complex. Spooky!
I keep old tickets sometimes, the oldest being from 1976. I also have one for the Wuppertaler Schwebebahn, a 10p Tube ticket, a twice-clipped return from Bromley South to Canterbury East for £3.30, and the inaugural Network Day card from 21 June 1986 that cost £1 and saw us to Canterbury, London, Chichester and Brighton.
Edmondson tickets, gone the way of post boxes on railway carriages (supplement 1/2d), automatic shoe shine machines, and those devices that printed out metal luggage tags and made the user look like an extra in the film Metropolis. Clipping of Edmondson tickets wasn't always straightforward. Sometimes a guard (pre-"ticket inspector") would study it like a piece of the Dead Sea Scrolls, claiming the ticket had been punched too often or not enough for the journey undertaken, and demand restitution. You may get it clipped after every mainline station en route till it resembled filigree, or not at all with the inspector turning up his nose as if it wasn't worth his time getting involved in its complexities.
Nice one Mr J. I've still got my 10p ticket from white city (no.33962) purchased on a dark and stormy night way back in 1976.
Talking tickets... When did those ticket machines that you used to see at tube stations with 4d, 6d, 9d, 1/- etc displayed on them disappear from Tube stations. Each machine would have a list of stations clearly displayed on each one. That would be the single ticket price to them from whichever station they were situated in. They were generally floor standing and about four feet tall either light blue or silver grey. Busy stations had whole rows of them.
Free train travel in Sydney for next 3 weeks due to industrial action too lol. It has made the roads far less clogged :). People are still ''expected' to pay of course but there won't be any checking of tickets anywhere on the network. i feel sorry for anyone who bought a monthly ticket. Sadly it does not cover country link and interstate train services lol.
Fun fact: tickets were numbered 0000 to 9999 so they came in batches of 10,000 with only 9 digits.
And then once they got to 9999 there would be a small 1 before the main number and it would revert to 0000
Nice one indeed Jago and thank you muchly for a great bit of railway history!
The Edinburgh & Glasgow Railway got around the Parliamentary Trains by running their old 3rd Class open wagons as an even cheaper 4th Class.
I did enjoy this video. It's a fun game to play on a visit to a heritage line to buy old tickets and note through all the details. I have various ones in my possession along with other "Ephemera".
Old stocks were sometimes a long while in using up as you wouldn't bother printing new tickets for every company name change or station name change. For many years the Railway Magazine would have occasional letters from people issued a ticket for a journey which was a relic of decades before. (Their archive is both great value and great fun). Sadly such fun and games was stopped when we ceased to use the Edmondson tickets.
In Secret Seven it is noted that few hobbies were more cherished and more exasperating than collecting tickets, as you were supposed to hand them over at the end of your trip for accounting. I do wonder if the railway clearing house staff ever supplied eager boys with accounted for tickets as presents.
You can read the dates stamped on the tickets, e.g. at 6:17 "11NO10" is 11 November 1910
I thought that. It is backwards though, which is a bit odd. Also visible from the other side, so could be a mirror image but then the N would be back-to-front. The one at 4:10 says 25AP30 (25 April 1930), which contradicts Jago's assertion that it must be pre-1922 because of Farringdon. Maybe the pre-printed tickets didn't update promptly with the station name, especially as it's close?
@@stephenholt4670 exactly.
Edmondson tickets were printed in batches of 250. Often a booking clerk might order a thousand. Just because of a station name change or other minor technicality, was no reason to waste a valuable asset.
@@stephenholt4670 Yes, the ticket was pushed end-first into a date-stamping press when issued. The ticket needs to be turned so the dated end is at the top in order to read the date. They probably didn't bother to reprint the ticket stock when Farringdon Street was renamed since it was just a routing and not a destination, so there would be less likelihood of confusion.
After a not so hard evening driving a bus here, it was nice to come home open a bottle of wine (well had enough beer last Friday at the Gbbf) sit on the sofa and watch another excellent episode, especially a tale from the Met... It was.... Just the ticket 😂😅😆😃😀🙂😏😐🙄 I'll get my coat.... Greetings from the Vienna woods... Well done sir 😊👍🏽
Down at Corfe Castle station they have a working ticket printing machine in their museum, which I was privileged to see in operation a few months ago. It's usually kept safely locked away.
We had those old style tickets here in Sydney Australia up until the early 90s. The used to stamp the date on it, quaint huh?!
Great vid:) Loved the mention of the lines carrying parcels. I've just moved to Peckham and have been familiarising myself with the current proposals to redevelop Peckham Rye station. Network Rail have some great info online including a chronology of the station and right there on the old old building plans...a parcel room and loading bay...was confused when I first seen it but makes sense now!
Recommend a look into the history of Peckham Rye station as well as the plans, which are pretty big in terms of redevelopment plans. The station, and formerly bricked up iron staircase are really beautiful, along with the former waiting room. In addition a billiards club was successfully run in the building for a number of years! Now the old station square is to the brought back, resulting in the demolition of an existing, operational but very neglected arcade building which hems the station into a narrow, ill-suited alley out the back and will return what is a very handsome station back to having frontage onto Rye Lane again.
I remember these old tickets going through the date stamp machine and this made me feel old as I recall Aldersgate station.
A helpful hint about the old money: 1 1/2d was either A penny ha'penny or three ha'pence. One and a half pence only came in with decimalisation.
Good detective work with the tickets though.
Yes, I noticed that mistake. Jago is enjoying the detective work that he does to date the tickets. That little error dates him! He must be too young to remember what people called various prices in pre-decimal days. Quite a lot of everyday things would have cost three halfpence (pronounced 'haypence') or a penny halfpeny (also pronounced 'haypenny'), not to mention 'thripence', 'sixpence', a shilling, half a crown, five bob, ten bob, etc. Language dates as much as anything. As an oldie nowadays I am often completely flummoxed by some modern idiom that is quite new to me. What on earth does it mean to say something 'is a thing'? I've worked it out now, but you won't find it in any dictionary, yet.
@@orglancs While older people would understand three ha'pence, the generation used to decimal coinage would be confused.
@@orglancs florins? (Or two bob bits?) I used to love the way that these two coexisted in the currency.
As to farthings, don't get me started!
Three halfpence coins once existed (and still do in the annual Maundy Money the Queen gives out). Fourpence coins did too. Both were sterling silver.
@@orglancs There were also "Guineas" which I don't think were actual coins (well, maybe in the 17th Century they were). A Guinea was 21 shillings and was usually the price quoted for goods in posh shops. It finally went out with decimalisation.
Five bob was a Crown.
When the proposed changeover to the smaller 10p piece was announced in 1992, a lot of King George VI florins (2 shilling coins) suddenly appeared in circulation. Looks like a lot of people didn't want to be caught out with coins that would no longer use coin operated vending machines. Speaking of vending machines, the New Zealand 20 cent coin was reduced in size in 2006 as apparently the original 1967 size coin was being used in vending machines in Australia and the U.K. instead of the more valuable local 20 cent or 10p coins, as the 1967 design was the same size as these two.
3:25 Parliamentary trains are mentioned by the titular character in Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan's 'The Mikado':
'The idiot who in railway carriages scribbles on window-panes,
We only suffer to ride on a buffer in parliamentary trains...'
The lack of comfort on said trains was presumably part of the joke.
Awesome sleuthing there Jago! 🌟 My admiration both historical and geographical!
Thanks for this insight into railway tickets, sir Jago.
What a fab video. So many clues from those tickets and a lot of info! We will call you Jago Sherlock from now on ;)
This video is just fascinating, seeing these kinds of tickets is one of the things I love about heritage railways. :)
I remember tickets like that on SPTE services in the 1980s 👵🏻.
That episode was just the ticket! 😉
I miss the old tickets I love a bit of nostalgia and the only way I can get my fix of getting my ticket punched is going on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway 🚂🚂
Great video Jago as always.
Bayswater and Praed SDtreet were not part of the District Railway 100 years ago. The metropolitan ran all the way to South Kensington. The District only got as far as High St Kensington. It was only after 1933 that District trains ran beyond HSK.
I used to catch the train from aheffield to London or London to Sheffield daily, and the ticket would be ink stamped so lick you finger just before passing the ticket then when you are passed it back wipe the ink off it I used the same down ticket for about a month, yes I have a valid ticket as well but I got board and you have to play these games lol
Another laconic missive from the doyen of London Underground travelling. Thanks for uploading.