3D tickets

[Magdalia]

Tuesday 08/04/80

At Darlington I purchased a 3D ticket. This was a ticket designed to allow three return trips within a week to a variety of destinations, aimed at the impoverished holidaymaker. They sold a similar ticket at York, but the Darlington version had a better range of destinations, notably Dundee, which opened up most of central Scotland to the keen (i.e. desperate) basher. The tickets were like a standard NCR ticket, but with tear-off strips at the bottom, so as you completed each of your three days you were supposed to tear off the used ticket. Very few guards or ticket inspectors understood what they were, and tended to just hand the ticket back ungripped. My omission in forgetting to remove the "used" portion of the tickets only added to the confusion. So this "3-day in 7" ticket functioned very nicely as a 7 day rover ticket covering pretty much anywhere between London, Lincoln, Bangor, and Dundee. It's fair to say I got very good value for money over the coming week out of that ticket (and apologies in advance to those of you reading this thread, as the next couple of weeks are quite intensive) …

I have vague recollections of using 3D tickets in the 1980s. I think that the nearest place to the Fens that sold them was Grantham. I can't remember what was on the destination list, but I'm confident that Grantham to Dundee was not on the menu.

Does anyone have any more details on which stations sold 3D tickets and the menu of destinations?

 

[CW2]

As I noted, they did sell them at York too, but to a less-attractive (to me as a basher) range of destinations. Alas I don't have any of the original tickets or leaflets.
I do recall that the following year the range of destinations from Darlington was amended such that Dundee was replaced with Dunbar. I decided this was an obvious error, got my pen out, and overwrote "bar" with "dee", and happily used the ticket as I had done previously. Nobody turned a hair!