Edmondson railway ticket
Encyclopedia
Thomas Edmondson
Thomas Edmondson is the inventor of theEdmondson railway ticket....
, a trained cabinet maker
Cabinet making
Cabinet making is the practice of using various woodworking skills to create cabinets, shelving and furniture.Cabinet making involves techniques such as creating appropriate joints, dados, bevels, chamfers and shelving systems, the use of finishing tools such as routers to create decorative...
, who became a station master
Station master
The station master was the person in charge of railway stations, in the United Kingdom and some other countries, before the modern age. He would manage the other station employees and would have responsibility for safety and the efficient running of the station...
on the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway
Newcastle and Carlisle Railway
The Newcastle and Carlisle Railway, occasionally referred to as the Tyne Valley Line, is a railway line in northern England. The line was built in the 1830s, and links the city of Newcastle upon Tyne in Tyne and Wear with in Cumbria. Formal opening took place on 18 June 1838.The line follows the...
in England. He introduced his system on the Manchester and Leeds Railway
Manchester and Leeds Railway
The Manchester and Leeds Railway was a railway company in the United Kingdom which opened in 1839, connecting Manchester with Leeds via the North Midland Railway which it joined at Normanton....
.
It came into general use with the opening of the Railway Clearing House
Railway Clearing House
The British Railway Clearing House was an organisation set up to manage the allocation of revenue collected by numerous pre-grouping railway companies...
in 1842, as Vaughan puts it the essential standard feature.
Edmondson tickets in the United Kingdom
The tickets were printed on cards about 1 inch by 2 inches (2.5 by 5 cm), and were numbered. When the ticket was issued, it was date-stamped by a custom-made machine. The tickets to different destinations and of different types were stored in a lockable cupboard where the highest number of each issue was visible. Different colours and patterns helped distinguish the different types of tickets.British Rail
British Rail
British Railways , which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was the operator of most of the rail transport in Great Britain between 1948 and 1997. It was formed from the nationalisation of the "Big Four" British railway companies and lasted until the gradual privatisation of British Rail, in stages...
's centralised paper and printing centre at Crewe
Crewe
Crewe is a railway town within the unitary authority area of Cheshire East and the ceremonial county of Cheshire, England. According to the 2001 census the urban area had a population of 67,683...
had a number of pre-1900 Waterloo printing press
Printing press
A printing press is a device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium , thereby transferring the ink...
es which met its 320 million
Million
One million or one thousand thousand, is the natural number following 999,999 and preceding 1,000,001. The word is derived from the early Italian millione , from mille, "thousand", plus the augmentative suffix -one.In scientific notation, it is written as or just 106...
annual demand for Edmondson railway tickets. The last press was switched off in 1988 and the use of Edmondson tickets by British Rail ceased in February 1990.
The system is still in use on some heritage railways in the UK, such as the Leighton Buzzard Narrow Gauge railway or the Talyllyn Railway
Talyllyn Railway
The Talyllyn Railway is a narrow-gauge preserved railway in Wales running for from Tywyn on the Mid-Wales coast to Nant Gwernol near the village of Abergynolwyn. The line was opened in 1866 to carry slate from the quarries at Bryn Eglwys to Tywyn, and was the first narrow gauge railway in Britain...
but has been superseded on other railway systems. The Severn Valley railway
Severn Valley Railway
The Severn Valley Railway is a heritage railway in Shropshire and Worcestershire, England. The line runs along the Severn Valley from Bridgnorth to Kidderminster, following the course of the River Severn for much of its route...
, the West Somerset Railway
West Somerset Railway
The West Somerset Railway is a railway line that originally linked and in Somerset, England.It opened in 1862 and was extended from Watchet to by the Minehead Railway in 1874. Although just a single track, improvements were needed in the first half of the twentieth century to accommodate the...
, the Bluebell Railway
Bluebell Railway
The Bluebell Railway is a heritage line running for nine miles along the border between East and West Sussex, England. Steam trains are operated between and , with an intermediate station at .The railway is managed and run largely by volunteers...
, the Isle of Wight Steam Railway
Isle of Wight Steam Railway
The Isle of Wight Steam Railway is a heritage railway on the Isle of Wight. The railway passes through 5½ miles of unspoiled countryside from to station, passing through the small village of Havenstreet, where the line has a station, headquarters and a depot...
and the Swanage Railway
Swanage Railway
The Swanage Railway is a long heritage railway in the Purbeck district of Dorset, England. The railway follows the route of the Purbeck branch line between Norden railway station, Corfe Castle railway station, Harman's Cross railway station, Herston Halt railway station and Swanage...
all print Edmondson tickets for their own use as well as for a number of other heritage lines. In Sussex the Bluebell Railway
Bluebell Railway
The Bluebell Railway is a heritage line running for nine miles along the border between East and West Sussex, England. Steam trains are operated between and , with an intermediate station at .The railway is managed and run largely by volunteers...
has a number of Edmondson printing machines that are to be placed on display in a specially built museum at the front of Sheffield Park station. There are several small companies that still produce Edmondson tickets on request.
Half fares
Typically, half-fare tickets (say, for children) would be created by having a diagonal cut across the ticket, thus having a value of half the adult fare. The remaining part could then used as another child ticket, or counted as a credit.Rear of ticket
The reverse side of a ticket might be endorsed with "Subject to rules and regulations of X Railway", for a given railway company X. In Poland alternative (less popular) destinations were printed there (e.g. "albo [Polish for `or`] Lucynów, albo Mienia" for a ticket from WarsawWarsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
to a then-popular summer vacation village, Urle
Urle
Urle is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Jadów, within Wołomin County, Masovian Voivodeship, in east-central Poland. It lies approximately north-east of Wołomin and north-east of Warsaw.The village has a population of 380...
).
Use in other countries
The Edmondson system was widely used in other countries outside of the UK, in many European countries such as CzechoslovakiaCzechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, or Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, as well as outside of Europe, for example in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
and Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
. The use of Edmondson tickets ceased in most countries in the 1980s or 1990s.
In Switzerland, Edmondson tickets were issued regularly until December 2007 at some stations, especially of the RhB
RhB
The Rhaetian Railway is a Swiss transport company, owning the largest network of all the private railways in Switzerland. The company operates most of the railways in the Swiss canton of Graubünden as the Swiss federal railway company SBB-CFF-FFS extend only a few kilometres over the cantonal...
. Edmondson tickets are still printed and distributed (also via internet order) by the company Druckerei Aeschbacher in Worb (Bern/Switzerland).
While they are no longer used on regular passenger railways in Australia, Edmondson tickets are still issued by many Australian heritage and tourist railways; the Puffing Billy Railway prints its own Edmondson Tickets, having 5 ticket printing machines including a working Edmondson original. It also prints tickets for most of the preserved or heritage railways in Australia as well as exporting tickets to the Talyllyn Railway.
In Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
there were two printing houses which printed Edmondson tickets: the first one at Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
from 1898 until 1999, the second one at Vrútky
Vrútky
Vrútky ; ) is a town in northern Slovakia, close to the city of Martin. It lies in the historic Turiec region.-Geography:The town lies at the confluence of the Váh and the Turiec, in the Turčianska kotlina, near the Malá Fatra mountain range. It is located north of the city of Martin, with which...
. Both of them appertained to the state transportation publishing house NADAS. NADAS was privatized to NADAS AFGH s. r. o. (Ltd.). In 1993 Czechoslovakia split into the two countries of the Czech Republic and Slovakia and the state railway company ČSD
Czechoslovak State Railways
Czechoslovak State Railways was a state-owned railway company in Czechoslovakia.The company was created in 1918, after the end of First World War and the breakup of Austria-Hungary...
was divided into České dráhy
Ceské dráhy
České dráhy or Czech Railways is the main railway operator of the Czech Republic. In 2010 its consolidated revenues reached CZK 41.0 bn...
(ČD) and Železnice Slovenskej republiky (ŽSR). The Prague printing house produced 50,000 tickets per day until start of decrement. Since 1999 the ČD stopped to give orders for those tickets and the production was stopped. In 1999, the new private narrow gauge railway company Jindřichohradecké místní dráhy (JHMD, Local Railways of Jindřichův Hradec
Jindrichuv Hradec
Jindřichův Hradec is a town in the South Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. It has approximately 22,700 inhabitants.- History :The first written mention of the town is in 1220. Before that, it was probably a Slavic settlement. At the end of the 12th century more people arrived...
surroundings) bought the machine accessories from Prague and since 2000 they run their own printing house at Kamenice nad Lipou
Kamenice nad Lipou
Kamenice nad Lipou is a small town situated in the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands between Pelhřimov and Jindřichův Hradec. Its most important sight is a castle. It took part of its name after an ancient lime tree that still grows in the garden adjacent to the castle . The tree is believed to be...
, for their own use as well as for nostalgic rides of ČD and a number of museum railways. JHMD keeps (together with 4 newer machines) one of two extant Goebl printing machines from 1895 in the world. In the eighties, at some ten of the biggest railway stations in Czechoslovakia special mechanical printing machines were used, which printed tickets directly at the station using the prepared cards in Edmondson's format.
The Edmondson tickets are used by heritage railways in India like the Nilgiri Mountain Railway
Nilgiri Mountain Railway
The Nilgiri Mountain Railway is a railway in Tamil Nadu, India, built by the British in 1908, and was initially operated by the Madras Railway Company. The railway still relies on its fleet of steam locomotives. NMR comes under the jurisdiction of the newly formed Salem Division...
; they are also used (2011) by the Paraguayan railway Ferrocarril Presidente Don Carlos Antonio Lopez.
In Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...
, The government owned Sri Lanka Railways
Sri Lanka Railways
Sri Lanka Railway Department, branded "Sri Lanka Railways", is a key department of the Sri Lankan Government under the Ministry of Transport with a history that begins in 1858...
uses second hand machines purchased from The Netherlands to print their tickets.
In Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
most local railway tickets keep the Edmondson format. These are modern magnetic back tickets issued by vending machines, punched by automatic station entry gates and collected at the exit gates. In some rural stations, however, hand-punching is still done by railway employees.
Further reading
- Bray, Maurice I., (1986). Railway Tickets, Timetables & Handbills. Ashbourne: Moorland Publishing Co. Ltd. ISBN 0-86190-163-0.
- Farr, Michael (1991). Thomas Edmondson and his Tickets. Andover: author. ISBN 0-905033-13-2
- Glover, John (1985). "Mechanisation of ticket issuing". In: Modern RailwaysModern RailwaysModern Railways is a British monthly magazine covering the rail transport industry published by Ian Allan. It has been published since 1962....
, Vol. 42, April 1985, Pages 192-195.