Ticket stock used in other countries.

[stadler]

With the UK gradually switching from our nice traditional CCST mag stripe card stock to orange paper roll stock and now even white paper roll stock i thought it would be interesting to discuss ticket stocks currently used in other countries.

Are there any other countries that have switched from higher quality paper card ticketing to cheap paper roll tickets as i am curious if this downgrade is being done elsewhere?

Also are there any other countries (other than the UK and Ireland) that still use CCST tickets (bank card sized tickets printed on thicker card paper) or use mag stripe tickets or even use CCST mag stripe just like us?

I know in Paris they used mag stripe tickets but they are much smaller. They are about the size of our old Edmondson tickets. Warsaw also used the same tickets that Paris uses. There might be a few other countries with mag stripes but i can not think of any off the top of my head.

Netherlands use CCST stock but it is not mag stripe. Instead it has a tiny thin smartcard chip in it. Basically a disposable smartcard. think the Glasgow Subway use the same stock.

Eurostar still use airplane tickets. These are those massive tickets printed on thicker card stock. I think quite a few Mainland European operators use those too. We used to have them in the UK for advance tickets but they were scrapped in the early or mid 2000s.

 

[rvdborgt]

Eurostar still use airplane tickets. These are those massive tickets printed on thicker card stock. I think quite a few Mainland European operators use those too. We used to have them in the UK for advance tickets but they were scrapped in the early or mid 2000s.

AFAIK they're not airplane tickets but international rail tickets on security paper, using the layout and background agreed on within the CIT. They may have the same dimensions as airplane tickets, but I doubt there many other similarities.
Also see e.g.:

Ticketing: old ticket layouts being phased out – UIC Communications

CIT, together with UIC, has been providing ticketing solutions for its members for the past number of decades. The central focus of CIT's Manual for International Rail Tickets (MIRT) is the ticket…

uic.org

 

[stadler]

AFAIK they're not airplane tickets but international rail tickets on security paper, using the layout agreed on within the CIT. They may have the same dimensions as airplane tickets, but I'm not sure if there are any other similarities.

Yes that makes sense. I did not know what else to call them. I am sure they probably have a proper name but i am not sure what it is. They are the same exact size as airplane tickets so i always call them that.

 

[30907]

DB have been using (reasonably heavy-duty) paper for years, Czechia similar but flimsier, Slovakia use flimsy paper about the size of the smallest CC receipt.

 

[AlbertBeale]

Yes that makes sense. I did not know what else to call them. I am sure they probably have a proper name but i am not sure what it is. They are the same exact size as airplane tickets so i always call them that.

Maybe the history of the oblong ES ticket size (also used on some continental railways) is that they're the same size/shape as the old international CIV tickets. On these, on a long journey involving a ferry crossing for example, there might be several coupons (all of that size) hand-written at the booking office on carbon-impregnated paper so that they had a second copy (or so that some coupons could be doubled up?), and the succession of coupons for legs of the journey would be stapled inside an official international [well, in Europe anyway] blue and white thin card cover of the same shape. The top card showed the total price, etc, and the whole lot formed one through CIV ticket. Each coupon might cover a leg of the overall journey via more than one country, and might give routing points (or sometimes alternative routing points, ie "via X or Y" [though other than that the ticket would be accepted via any route reasonable for the overall journey]). Extra coupons, inserted in the correct order, might be a sleeper berth reservation, a "boat coupon" which would be torn out when you boarded the ferry), and so on. I still think of these tickets, with their appropriate clips by ticket inspectors on each coupon, as being "real" international train tickets.

 

[dutchflyer]

1.historically seen-admittedly from very long ago, it was in fact the other way around: as railways came first, also for INTERNational-these were the model on to how IATA airplane tickets were more or less made look after. Railways also pretty soon started to use protective paper to prevent fraud from people ´making the tix themselves´. This seems gradually to be done away with or at least seems much less prevalent. And I also cannot recall when it was last that I still got such an official IATA ticket for to fly-probably before 2000. And I do fly fairly often (at least 1-2x/yr) ICA=intercontinental.
2.what mr Beale above here describes was that standard-and in fact for a very long time DB had its own domestic ticket stock made to have these coupons already fit to be inserted in that cover. Several german travel agents-able to also issue tickets, had their own covers for that purpose. The FRench could do that too - but had cardboard hard paper stock for it. I think about the last remnant of that was-probably still is- the printed paper version of an InterRail.
Coupons could also have tear-off parts (f.e. for ferries), or even some organised buslinks in between or other services.
What was mighty important was the exact nomination of the official border crossing points between countries. The original idea was 1 coupon for each country involved. The copies of that had to finally land in some organisation or branch of the railways who tallied and counted them all to have each railways get its rightful share of the takings. As is still the case with IR=Inerrail-but now for >90% via the apps etc.
3.there is still the transport ticket society I think-as most of these very specific societies based in the UK, which will have much more knowledge.

 

[route101]

The Netherlands use card sized tickets like UK ones.
Italy uses the boarding pass sized tickets but on my last trip the ticket details were printed portrait on the ticket.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Maybe the history of the oblong ES ticket size (also used on some continental railways) is that they're the same size/shape as the old international CIV tickets

Deutsche Bahn prints everything on pink and blue triangled CIV blanks with CIV markings. From a booking office they're usually ATB (airline ticket blank) sized, often printed on a piece of laser printed A4 with the top torn off on issue, from a TVM they're UK CCST size (off a roll), but there's no domestic version as such. Probably practical given that they're at the heart of Europe and there will be lots of international journeys.

The use of this standard format is very common indeed on the mainland.

 

[route101]

I remember buying a ticket from Skopje to Thessaloniki and it was boarding stock but it was handwritten. There was one price and that was cheap.

 

[dub_boi]

Maybe the history of the oblong ES ticket size (also used on some continental railways) is that they're the same size/shape as the old international CIV tickets. On these, on a long journey involving a ferry crossing for example, there might be several coupons (all of that size) hand-written at the booking office on carbon-impregnated paper so that they had a second copy (or so that some coupons could be doubled up?), and the succession of coupons for legs of the journey would be stapled inside an official international [well, in Europe anyway] blue and white thin card cover of the same shape. The top card showed the total price, etc, and the whole lot formed one through CIV ticket. Each coupon might cover a leg of the overall journey via more than one country, and might give routing points (or sometimes alternative routing points, ie "via X or Y" [though other than that the ticket would be accepted via any route reasonable for the overall journey]). Extra coupons, inserted in the correct order, might be a sleeper berth reservation, a "boat coupon" which would be torn out when you boarded the ferry), and so on. I still think of these tickets, with their appropriate clips by ticket inspectors on each coupon, as being "real" international train tickets.

View attachment IMG_1938.JPG
Like this (dog optional) ?
Still used for Sail Rail tickets tickets issued in Ireland. Usefully they allow break of journey, while tickets issued in GB, which are typically on CCST stock, do not.

 

[Lukeo2311]

Tickets - I have some German & Austrian tickets in this link

 

[AlbertBeale]

Tickets - I have some German & Austrian tickets in this link

The OBB ticket at the bottom of this graphic seems to be a standard format for lots of national/international tickets in Europe these days - and is in turn, I think, derived from the way the information was laid out on the coupons in the traditional clip-of-papers-in-a-piece-of-cardboard CIV tickets. I must dig out some of my ancient international tickets from the bottom of a box somewhere...

I remember when buying international tickets in person at the Swiss Travel Centre in London (up to at least a few years ago they sold tickets for European journeys well beyond Switzerland itself) that they had printing machines loaded with two different types of ticket stock, so as to better issue tickets that would be recognised in the part of Europe they were to be used in. My batch of journeys involved both types of stock [but issued as separate free-standing tickets, not clipped-together coupons counting as one journey like in the old days]. However, in the case of one leg of my journey the officials of the train company concerned were, on account of the type of ticket stock, convinced that I had a ticket which was invalid for their particular train (I didn't). Much (largely good-natured) trilingual confusion followed - I think I told the relevant tale on this forum some years ago.

 

[185143]

Irish Rail use CCST from TVMs and booking offices. Not sure about onboard.

Whereas Translink NI issue tickets on bus ticket stock.

 

[mikeg]

Lithuanian tickets are issued on standard receipt roll more or less. Serbian tickets not much better. Both use Aztec codes.

 

[Springs Branch]

V/Line, the regional train operator in the Australian state of Victoria, still issues CCST tickets for longer distance journeys as far as I know.

Similar to this one, with a metallic holographic security strip


Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vline-printed-ticket.jpg by Marcus Wong Wongm, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Shorter V/Line 'regional' journeys such as the one shown here (Melbourne & South Geelong = 82 km / 50 miles one way) would now be covered by Melbourne's zonal Myki smartcard and paper tickets would no longer be issued.

But CCST-style paper tickets are still used (along with e-tickets) on 'long distance' V/Line trains to destinations such as Albury, Ararat, Bairnsdale, Echuca, Maryborough, Shepparton, Swan Hill and Warrnambool.

 

[signed]

SNCF TGV are issued as receipt stock with some exceptions as machines slowly empty their cardboard ticket stock. But the fact that everything mainline is etickets, even from a machine or a ticket office, it's probably seldom used.

TER tickets, excluding Paris region and I think Normandy, are all still CCST when buying on the regional ticket machines.

You can trick a mainline machine in giving you a IATA cardboard stock by buying a TER ticket there. It doesn't work universally however, some are locked to mainline only.

 

[zero]

Single tickets in Hong Kong are CCST, I haven't touched one in decades but they are a sort of metallic card, not paper. Bangkok BTS uses the same stock.

Doha Metro in Qatar uses chip in paper CCST like the Netherlands.

Eurostar still use airplane tickets. These are those massive tickets printed on thicker card stock.

Those are boarding passes (and many airlines now print BPs on flimsy thermal paper instead of thick card).

As I recall, actual paper flight tickets were always printed on flimsy thermal paper, with several carbon copies in a booklet - for example as seen at https://liveandletsfly.com/united-airlines-paper-ticket/ The outside of the booklet may have been card but that was just for protection and decoration.

 

[kkong]

The photo below shows a handwritten carbon paper ticket from Belitsa to Razlog, issued by a BDZ guard on board the Rhodope narrow gauge railway on 17 November 2024.

 

[Polrail]

PKP Intercity in Poland went to printing tickets (domestic and international) from a roll of thermal paper in 2024.

I think it was 2023 when they eliminated the possibility of hand-written CIV tickets using tariff books. Now if it's not in the computer, it cannot be issued.