Onboard tickets

[Arty Morgan]

What year was the first ticket sold on board a train in the UK?

 

[30907]

The Talyllyn's mobile booking office dates back to around 1900, as do the GWR's unstaffed "haltes."
I expect the practice goes back much further though - even before the days of corridor trains, some big stations had ticket collecting platforms on the way in, and I would guess there was some official way of dealing with passengers without the correct ticket (short of prosecuting them!).

 

[Arty Morgan]

Interesting. Thank you.

 

[Journeyman]

Certainly the development of things like steam railmotors in the early 20th century led to the provision of a greater number of unstaffed halts, so I'm sure on-train ticket sales were a feature of such lines, at least for a while.

 

[Springs Branch]

Certainly the development of things like steam railmotors in the early 20th century led to the provision of a greater number of unstaffed halts, so I'm sure on-train ticket sales were a feature of such lines, at least for a while.

I wonder what were the mechanics of issuing tickets onboard railmotors and local trains calling at unstaffed halts in the steam era?

Back in the day, Edmondson tickets were obviously the widespread standard at conventional station booking offices.

Did the guards on railmotors each carry a collection of pre-printed Edmondson tickets for unstaffed stations on their route, and clip and issue these in the same way as early tram conductors? Presumably only a limited number of local destinations could be done this way.

Or would the guard write out each ticket by hand on something like an excess fare pad? I'd imagine this could be tricky and messy on a moving train in the days before biros & ballpoint pens.

Since study of historic railway tickets is a well-established "thing", presumably some informed collector would know the answer - and maybe have some evidence in their collections.

 

[Fleetwood Boy]

Get yourselves over to the Transport Ticket Society and all your questions will be answered. Not my area of expertise, but I don’t think edmondsons would have been commonly used, as the dating presses aren’t very portable. My expectation would be a range of different approaches, but in early days most typically punch tickets, as used by contemporary bus operators, and later mechanised ticket machines, again based on bus operators’ practice of the time. In most cases you’d have to rebook at The Junction, no through ticketing.