British Rail appointed travel agents

[Sholto Douglas]

A very interesting and nostalgic review of my early days in the travel industry.

I start work in 1968 at Exchange Travel's office in Piccadilly, Manchester. In those days, of course pre-computer, we held both BR domestic and European licenses.

All BR tickets were issued on the old Edmondson style card tickets. These tickets came in a variety of versions. Where there was sufficient demand the route (either single or return) was printed on the ticket. Alternatively you could have, for an example "Manchester/Blank" where you just filled on the destination or "Blank/Blank" where the origin and destination needed to be written. Of course all fares had to be checked against the relevant fares manual - I seem to recall that we had about 6 volumes in order to cover all routes and sometimes you had to calculate the fare based on journey distance (miles and chains??). You had to ensure that you kept your log of tickets sold up to date as if you sold a "blank" ticket you would have no idea of it's value which meant that your reconciliation at end of day would be very hard - no such thing as copies of the ticket.

Thanks to the original poster for creating this thread.

 

[Dai Corner]

I remember a former colleague telling me he acted as a BR agent at his Cambridge University college, answering queries and selling tickets. This would have been in the 1970s.

 

[WesternLancer]

Thomas Cook had stopped doing rail bookings by 1990, or at least some branches had. In the early months of that year I wanted to make some bookings for travel on VIA Rail in Canada. At the time VIA Rail (and I think possibly Amtrak) were represented in London by an outfit (Compass Travel?) with an office near Victoria station from where you could get brochures and timetables, but to make bookings you had to go to a travel agent who would contact Compass Travel on your behalf. I asked Thomas Cook in Kingston-upon-Thames about this, and was met with the immediate response 'we don't do trains'. (I can't remember the details of how this was resolved, but they were eventually persuaded to contact Compass Travel as requested).

Thanks - interesting to read that. Of course they kept on doing the timetable for quite some years after they must have exited the rail ticketing market. Easy enough to do the former with the specialist team, the latter presumably involved training a lot of people to service what they saw as a declining market.

 

[181]

I remember a former colleague telling me he acted as a BR agent at his Cambridge University college, answering queries and selling tickets. This would have been in the 1970s.

I did something like that in the early 1990s, but it didn't involve selling tickets, just answering enquiries about train times and fares so people knew what to ask for when buying from the station (or presumbly travel agent).

 

[frodshamfella]

Uh? How is that not self-contradictory?

You could issue tickets originating in the UK , commonly London Victoria to say Paris. But you cou,d not issue Paris to Bordeaux for example. I worked in a couple of travel agents at the time that had Continental Rail tickets and this was the case.

 

[Cheshire Scot]

You could issue tickets originating in the UK , commonly London Victoria to say Paris. But you cou,d not issue Paris to Bordeaux for example. I worked in a couple of travel agents at the time that had Continental Rail tickets and this was the case.

But potentially London to Bordeaux via Paris perhaps?



EDIT:

Browsing the Scottish Region 1966/67 timetable I came across this page.

Two full pages each with two columns of listed agents, including in Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow, Thomas Cook . Some towns and cities had several particularly the two largest cities. Agents in towns which had by then lost their rail service, such as Bathgate and Selkirk, also Kirkwall and Lerwick meaning islanders could arrive on the mainland already holding tickets and reservations for their onward journey.

 

[frodshamfella]

But potentially London to Bordeaux via Paris perhaps?



EDIT:

Browsing the Scottish Region 1966/67 timetable I came across this page.

Two full pages each with two columns of listed agents, including in Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow, Thomas Cook . Some towns and cities had several particularly the two largest cities. Agents in towns which had by then lost their rail service, such as Bathgate and Selkirk, also Kirkwall and Lerwick meaning islanders could arrive on the mainland already holding tickets and reservations for their onward journey.

Exactly.

We used to have a National Rail fares manual. Which we used for fares ex London, say to Bristol or wherever , then we had a few local station fares. These were stations near to our office. So were were in Erith, so we that, and I think Barnehurst and one or two others. So you could do Barnehurst to Dover for example.

 

[Cheshire Scot]

Wasn’t Cockspur Street off Trafalgar Square a bit of a centre for rail ticket agencies? Or is my mind playing tricks.

Not sure about rail ticket agencies - may well have been, but more than one nation had a tourist information centre there who could probably provide tickets.

Funnily enough I have just stumbled upon reservations issued by Norwegian State Railways in Cockspur Street, issued in 1989, Couchette Kobenhavn to Oslo (£6.50), then a remaining stub which was presumably a seat reservation Oslo to Trondheim, and Sleeper Trondheim to Bodo (£13.90 - 2 berth), so yes, a rail ticket agency.