A train ticket is a ticket

Ticket (admission)

A ticket is a voucher that indicates that one has paid for admission to an event or establishment such as a theatre, movie theater, amusement park, zoo, museum, concert, or other attraction, or permission to travel on a vehicle such as an airliner, train, bus, or boat, typically because one has...

 issued by a railway operator that enables the bearer to travel on the operator's network or a partner's network. Tickets can authorize the bearer to travel a set itinerary at a specific time (common for long-distance railroads), a set itinerary at any time (common for commuter railroads), a set itinerary at multiple times, or an arbitrary itinerary at specific times. (The last two categories are often called passes: the former is often sold as a discounted block of trips for commuters; the latter is often sold to vacationers—for instance, European Eurail

Eurail

The Eurorail Group G.I.E. is a Netherlands-based company, registered in Luxembourg, that sells passes and tickets for European railroads...

 passes.)

Tickets are conventionally printed on paper and are collected by a train conductor during the journey. Often, the conductor will give the passenger a seat check — another voucher indicating how far the passenger may travel on the system — or attach it over the seat. Some systems (America's Amtrak

Amtrak

The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak , is a government-owned corporation that was organized on May 1, 1971, to provide intercity passenger train service in the United States. "Amtrak" is a portmanteau of the words "America" and "track". It is headquartered at Union...

, for instance) have two-part tickets that permit the passenger to retain a cancelled ticket stub; others (the North American New Jersey Transit

New Jersey Transit

The New Jersey Transit Corporation is a statewide public transportation system serving the United States state of New Jersey, and New York, Orange, and Rockland counties in New York State...

 and MBTA commuter rail systems, for instance) do not.

Seat checks are changed frequently to ensure that passengers cannot retain and reuse them from journey to journey. (Conductors typically collect checks before stops to prevent this.)

Further reading

• Gordon Fairchild: "Local Tickets of Global Lands." Barteld Publishing 2008, ISBN 978-3-935961-11-0