Story of the railway ticket

Millions of railway tickets are issued daily through booking office windows all over the world. But how many of us have ever given a thought to the fascinating story that lies behind the slip of cardboard called the railway ticket, which serves as a passport to travel to the next village or take a trip round the country.

In fact, tickets were in existence even before the advent of railways. In earlier days people travelled by stage coach in Britain. The stage coach ‘station’ consisted of inns where passengers booked their seats in advance. Booking itself was a complicated business.

The booking clerk had to enter in his ledger details such as the passenger’s name, the coach in which the accommodation was required etc. The entries were made in triplicate. One copy was given to the passenger, one to the guard of the coach and the third was retained in the book. Passengers paid their fares to the guard at the end of the journey, and not at the time of booking, as we do now.

This system of booking was continued in the early days of the railways. But as traffic increased something less complicated and quicker was necessary. It was the Leicester and Swammington Railway that first issued passenger tickets in 1832.

The ticket was in the form of brass octagonal discs engraved with the initials of the railway, destination station and a serial number. But there was no date of issue.

Passengers paid the fares at the time of booking. They were allowed  into the train in order of priority indicated by the serial number on the ticket. The guard collected the discs at the end of the journey and returned them to the issuing station. They were thus used over and over again.

Most of the contemporary railways of the world followed this example of the British pioneers and issued metal tickets. They however did not enjoy a long life although metal tokens are still  issued to the officers of the railway.

As traffic increased , the necessity arose to  speed up the process of issuing tickets to passengers. It was Thomas Edmondson, Station Master at Milton, on the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway, who invented the modern ticket system as it is in use today. Born in 1972, Edmondson served for a time as a cabinet-maker and a grocer. In 1836, when he was appointed  station master, he quickly realized the disadvantages of the then ticket-issuing arrangements.

He set up a metal type in a wooden block and printed on cardboard strips the name and class of the most frequently issued tickets. These tickets were serially numbered and stored in a specially-designed case stacked in numerical order with their lowest number at the top.

The bottom plate of the case was counter-balanced by an arrangement of weighted strings and pulleys and on removal of the uppermost tickets, the other tickets on the tube moved up. Later this arrangement was reversed, putting the lowest numbered tickets at the bottom of the rack.

Then came the invention of ticket-dating machine. This consists of a wooden press with two swinging jaws one of which had the dating type, inked by a moving ribbon. It was first introduced on the Manchester and Leeds Railway, where Thomas Edmondson was later transferred, and gradually in India and other parts of the world.

The size of the railway ticket as designed by Edmondson is two-and-a-quarter inches by one-and-a-quarter inches. In fact, this has become standard in many countries including India. It is interesting to know that the early tickets issued by the Manchester and Leeds Railway had distinguishing symbols like ‘fleece’ for Manchester, a ‘cotton bag’ and a ‘thistle’ for the Scottish lines. Bilingual tickets as in India are also common in countries like Belgium and Switzerland.

To meet modern needs, various improvements have been introduced in the ticket printing, dating and issuing machinery. Modern electric machines, installed at busy stations combine printing and issuing of tickets. They are operated either by the booking clerk or set in motion by the insertion of coins. Indeed, they virtually do the work of a complete booking office.

There are mechanical robots which display fare lists, take passenger’s money, give change, print date and deliver tickets, all within a few seconds. But they all largely follow sthe basic principles devised by Edmondson more than a century ago. To him, the railways and the traveling public owe a deep debt.