Prior to re-grouping in 1923 could you buy a ticket from "A" to "B" with no restrictions as to the Company used?

[Bogallan]

Prior to re the re-grouping in 1923, when there were about 120 different railway companies, I was wondering if you were able to buy a ticket from say Elgin to Carlisle and travel over any private companies routes, whether it be the Highland Railway, North British, Caledonian, GNSR etc. In other words would there have been any restriction as to the route you took? The fare would be apportioned to the different companies by The Railway Clearing House I believe? If this were the case you could travel by any which route you pleased and it was all possible then, why cannot you do so now with our current TOCs?

 

[Snow1964]

Basically fares were mileage based, and apportioned by distance

Just had simple single, returns, and possibly local day returns.
Railway clearing House in conjunction with all the companies determined the rate.

Had third, second, and First class rates per mile
Might still have been workman's tickets (generally before 6am)

Anything else, Pullman, sleeping car etc was a supplement.

The competition was which companies tickets you bought for long distance, did you go to station A or B in a city and buy their tickets and use their trains to get to another part of the country, wasn't generally multiple operators on one line (and if they were, as joint lines they had agreed a revenue pooling apportionment).

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Railway companies had their preferred partners, much like airline codeshares/alliances today.
So the LNWR had ticketing agreements with, for instance, the L&Y, North Stafford, Furness, Caledonian etc, all funnelling traffic into Euston.
There were also joint line operations, so that Manchester-Cardiff/Bristol was a joint LNWR/GWR operation (via the Marches jointly-owned railway).
Liverpool-Newcastle was a joint LNWR/NER operation, split at Leeds

After the initial free-for-all phase, there were agreements on common tariffs, eg between Manchester and London.
But I don't know how that played out between the LNWR, Midland, GC and GN through services.
Most fares were mileage based, so that might have favoured the shortest route.
Grouping in 1923 consolidated these arrangements into wider corporate provisions under the Big 4.

 

[Gloster]

No, I don’t think so. The revenue was divided up according to the mileage of each company that was used. You would have to chose, for example, via Aviemore, Perth and Carstairs (Highland and Caledonian) or Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Hawick (Great North of Scotland, a bit of Caledonian, and North British). You therefore had to specify your route, but there might have been a bit of flexibility within a single company: if you had started from Nairn you might be able to travel to Aviemore either via Inverness or Grantown, but they were both Highland routes. The companies, then as now, wanted as much of the pie as they could get.

I think that the common tariffs mentioned above meant that on certain journeys, for example London-Manchester, the price was the same by whichever of the main routes you took. If you bought a ticket from the Midland it cost the same as the London & North Western or Great Central. However, I think it was possible to travel out on one company and back on another, but in that case there was some mechanism for crediting the railway that brought you back with half the revenue. I think you had to travel out with the company you bought from.

N.b. Although there were well over a hundred companies, most were fairly small and only about two dozen were of importance.

 

[Taunton]

Basically fares were mileage based, and apportioned by distance

Although fares were mileage-based, that was by the shortest route between those points. It was up to railway companies if they wanted to run a service by a longer route.

Longtime (and knowledgeable) rail writer Cecil J Allen once wrote that with a ticket from Swansea to London (priced by the distance via the Severn Tunnel) it would be possible to arrive at Liverpool Street. Because the LNWR would also take you with that ticket being valid from Swansea, via Shrewsbury and Stafford. And when you got to Stafford, the obscure penetrating Great Northern Line there would take you on, via Nottingham and Peterborough - where the Great Eastern, in turn, would pick you up to go via Cambridge, and thus to London Liverpool Street.

Having read of Allen's other exploits, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he actually did it! I don't know how the Clearing House actually knew to split the fare.

There were similar concepts for freight, charged by the shortest route but that charge then split in proportion to the route actually taken by the wagon, which allowed the Midland Railway to offer competitive fast freight services on unexpected transits like London to Bristol (via Birmingham) or London to Cambridge (via Kettering).

 

[Bogallan]

Very interesting and thank you all for your replies.

 

[PeterC]

The C J Allen anecdote is curious. I thought that tickets were to named stations, so one from South Wales would be to "Paddington" rather than generically to "London". Or did it mean that you had to specify "Liverpool Street" but would pay only the direct fare?

 

[Dai Corner]

The C J Allen anecdote is curious. I thought that tickets were to named stations, so one from South Wales would be to "Paddington" rather than generically to "London". Or did it mean that you had to specify "Liverpool Street" but would pay only the direct fare?

I wondered too. Would the GWR have sold you a ticket to London at Swansea High Street and the LNWR accept it at Swansea Victoria? Or did the LNWR 'price match' the GWR for commercial reasons? Was the LNWR ticket valid if you stopped short at, say, Cambridge?

 

[swt_passenger]

Minor point but wasn’t the 1923 process just called the “grouping”? Re-grouping implies it had been done before. Previously various lines merged with one another, but was that ever considered “grouping”?

 

[stuving]

Prior to re the re-grouping in 1923, when there were about 120 different railway companies, I was wondering if you were able to buy a ticket from say Elgin to Carlisle and travel over any private companies routes, whether it be the Highland Railway, North British, Caledonian, GNSR etc. In other words would there have been any restriction as to the route you took? The fare would be apportioned to the different companies by The Railway Clearing House I believe? If this were the case you could travel by any which route you pleased and it was all possible then, why cannot you do so now with our current TOCs?

The following quotation comes from a longer letter to the Yorkshire Evening Post, printed on 14/7/1927, from Ben Riley, a ticket inspector. He was trying to justify his job as being important and necessary, while in practice (as you would expect) a lot of passengers resented having their tickets refused at the barrier or on a train.

When we consider that there are 60 to 70 different kinds of railway tickets, also 20 to 30 different kinds of contract, traders, and season tickets, some with anything up to 20 different branches on them and available on three or four different railways - I have in mind one which is a nine folder, which the ticket examiner has to deal with at a glance - I think it is true to say that he has no enviable job. Tickets are snipped or pinched with various signs, symbols, letters and numbers, and the very fact of this being done is a guarantee that the ticket is in order for the journey which is being made. The marks on the ticket show the routes by which it has been used, and when sent to audit, the proper proportion of the value to each railway can be ascertained by them.

From that, I take it that the same process at the Railway Clearing House was in use after 1923, just with fewer companies. If you went on a long journey across more than one network, you would be given a ticket between named stations for each part of it, and perhaps for some lines (e.g. branch lines) within one company. Hence his comments about a "nine-folder" ticket - though I have no idea what physical form that took.

How the charges were calculated at RCH could depend on the circumstances: running on another company's metals with or without specific agreement, whole train or through carriages, hauled by whose locomotive, etc. Note his comments about the markings for route taken being used at RCH. I wonder - did the process only work for collected tickets?

 

[Taunton]

From that, I take it that the same process at the Railway Clearing House was in use after 1923, just with fewer companies. If you went on a long journey across more than one network, you would be given a ticket between named stations for each part of it, and perhaps for some lines (e.g. branch lines) within one company. Hence his comments about a "nine-folder" ticket - though I have no idea what physical form that took.

How the charges were calculated at RCH could depend on the circumstances: running on another company's metals with or without specific agreement, whole train or through carriages, hauled by whose locomotive, etc. Note his comments about the markings for route taken being used at RCH. I wonder - did the process only work for collected tickets?

Yes it did, and many/most tickets were collected, but for those that weren't the total tickets sold were proportionalised in the same manner. I suspect that the RCH may actually have processed and calculated just what they regarded as a representative sample, and applied these proportions to the total fares paid, otherwise it would be too tedious - a process I believe which is still applied to Interrail tickets across the railways of Europe.

I have no idea what a "nine folder" ticket is either, I would guess some form of season. Certainly for single journeys across companies just an Edmondson card ticket would be used.

 

[robert thomas]

Although fares were mileage-based, that was by the shortest route between those points. It was up to railway companies if they wanted to run a service by a longer route.

Longtime (and knowledgeable) rail writer Cecil J Allen once wrote that with a ticket from Swansea to London (priced by the distance via the Severn Tunnel) it would be possible to arrive at Liverpool Street. Because the LNWR would also take you with that ticket being valid from Swansea, via Shrewsbury and Stafford. And when you got to Stafford, the obscure penetrating Great Northern Line there would take you on, via Nottingham and Peterborough - where the Great Eastern, in turn, would pick you up to go via Cambridge, and thus to London Liverpool Street.

Having read of Allen's other exploits, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he actually did it! I don't know how the Clearing House actually knew to split the fare.

There were similar concepts for freight, charged by the shortest route but that charge then split in proportion to the route actually taken by the wagon, which allowed the Midland Railway to offer competitive fast freight services on unexpected transits like London to Bristol (via Birmingham) or London to Cambridge (via Kettering).

It was also valid from the Midland Railway Swansea St.Thomas station via Brecon Hereford and Birmingham to St.Pancras

 

[Pigeon]

Yes it did, and many/most tickets were collected, but for those that weren't the total tickets sold were proportionalised in the same manner. I suspect that the RCH may actually have processed and calculated just what they regarded as a representative sample, and applied these proportions to the total fares paid, otherwise it would be too tedious

Making sure they didn't miss collecting any tickets was a big deal. Dorothy L Sayers knew this. To the modern eye it sounds as if Lord Peter Wimsey was expecting an unfeasibly low missing-data rate, but the subsequent description of him seeking the data makes it clear why this was not the case.

I'd be surprised if the RCH didn't count every ticket they received, as well. Those were the days of mass data processing by huge armies of clerks, and the railways were one of the principal culprits with the huge amount of data they produced to make a couple of pennies of profit off each of countless transactions - it was their own idea in the first place, you could say, and after all it wasn't the bosses who were being lumbered with one of the most tedious jobs in the world.

 

[stuving]

I'd be surprised if the RCH didn't count every ticket they received, as well. Those were the days of mass data processing by huge armies of clerks, and the railways were one of the principal culprits with the huge amount of data they produced to make a couple of pennies of profit off each of countless transactions - it was their own idea in the first place, you could say, and after all it wasn't the bosses who were being lumbered with one of the most tedious jobs in the world.

There is a very detailed description of RCH's operations in 1935 in the Railway Wonders of the World partwork (all now on line). By that date the apportionment was largely done by fixed ratios, and the number of journeys based on records of tickets sold. Tickets were still collected and sent to RCH where a sample at least were counted to check the accuracy of the sales data. That was for passenger traffic, but RCH dealt with all the other stuff that crossed company boundaries too, and some of that much more laboriously.

 

[Dr Hoo]

Although fares were mileage-based, that was by the shortest route between those points. It was up to railway companies if they wanted to run a service by a longer route.

Longtime (and knowledgeable) rail writer Cecil J Allen once wrote that with a ticket from Swansea to London (priced by the distance via the Severn Tunnel) it would be possible to arrive at Liverpool Street. Because the LNWR would also take you with that ticket being valid from Swansea, via Shrewsbury and Stafford. And when you got to Stafford, the obscure penetrating Great Northern Line there would take you on, via Nottingham and Peterborough - where the Great Eastern, in turn, would pick you up to go via Cambridge, and thus to London Liverpool Street.

Having read of Allen's other exploits, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he actually did it! I don't know how the Clearing House actually knew to split the fare.

Slightly unsure how much dear CJA actually knew about 'tickets'. As he records proudly in his autobiography he had 'bearer passes' (mostly first class) for no fewer than 15 large railway companies from the tender age of 22. He was employed by the Great Eastern, for most of his time as a metallurgical inspector and specialist. Hence he needed to visit steelworks all over Britain and could flash his passes from Midland, GWR, L&NWR, Great Central, etc. on any indirect route of his choosing, even including ferries to Ireland and the Northern Counties Committee (and not always for duty purposes).

There is a very detailed description of RCH's operations in 1935 in the Railway Wonders of the World partwork (all now on line). By that date the apportionment was largely done by fixed ratios, and the number of journeys based on records of tickets sold. Tickets were still collected and sent to RCH where a sample at least were counted to check the accuracy of the sales data. That was for passenger traffic, but RCH dealt with all the other stuff that crossed company boundaries too, and some of that much more laboriously.

Cecil J Allen was, of course, the Consulting Editor for Railway Wonders and wrote 46 'chapters' himself. Not sure if the RCH item was one of his.

Meanwhile, back in the 'normal' world companies such as the Midland didn't advertise fares or ticket from St Pancras to 'indirect' places such as Bristol even though you might make such a journey on its own trains. To 'competitive' places like Manchester, Sheffield and so on the fares would match the L&NW, GC, GN or whoever but it seems that you were expected to use Midland services.

There was a separate world of special 'Tourist Tickets' but these generally involved specific tourist areas such as Scotland or the Lake District where there might be agreed revenue splits with other railways.

On the other hand there were dire warnings about doing things like breaking your journey on the return leg when your ticket would be collected and cancelled forthwith. There was also invocation of the Railways Clauses Consolidation Act 1845 about persons travelling beyond the distance for which they had paid as 'Fraud'.

In conclusion I think that it is far from clear that there was actually much 'casual' routeing flexibility in pre-grouping days (beyond that occasioned by companies such as the Midland running through services between St Pancras and Nottingham via both Trent and Melton Mowbray and suchlike).

 

[30907]

In conclusion I think that it is far from clear that there was actually much 'casual' routeing flexibility in pre-grouping days (beyond that occasioned by companies such as the Midland running through services between St Pancras and Nottingham via both Trent and Melton Mowbray and suchlike).

And even that flexibility wasn't universal: looking at the 1958 BR(S) timetable I discovered, rather to my surprise, that you paid a significant amount more (10% or so) to go via Brighton to Lewes and beyond rather than via Plumpton, and to Bognor etc rather than via Horsham. Portsmouth via Eastleigh was 25% higher than direct.
OTOH Bexhill and Hastings fares were the same via Plumpton and via Battle - which probably went back pre Grouping!