Ticketing and Routeing Pre-BR

[mikeg]

The various threads on historical ticketing and routeing over the years have got me thinking: How did all this work pre-BR? I know we had the Railway Clearing House to, among other things allocate revenue, in fact the parallels with Rail Settlement Plan are striking. However how did all this work from a passengers' perspective? One thing about old BR tickets is they often had a route printed on them but you were also entitled to use a BR Book of Routes, was there a Railway Clearing House book of routes or did you stick to the exact route booked? Or something else? Was there any ticket interavailability? The presence of a Clearing House suggests there was and given the 'Big Four' were meant to operate as a national system, what was the level of cooperation/coordination or even collusion?

Moreover I understand that as today passengers had a choice when travelling on Anglo-Scottish routes between the East and West coast, much as today, but that competition was largely on service standards, at least in the Big Four era. Presumably there were no dedicated fares and fares were divvied up (and set?) by the RCH? I suspect a lot of this has been lost to history but where might I find details on this? Is there anyone knowledgeable on the subject on this very forum?

Another comment I have is why did we have ticket collectors? I know it was supposedly for revenue allocation, but why didn't the mechanical machines create a tabulated (or not) audit roll in parallel which could have easily been used for this very purpose? At least from the early twentieth century this would have been fairly easy to do and the technology was there (see tabulating machines, where IBM got their start...)

 

[Magdalia]

Another comment I have is why did we have ticket collectors? I know it was supposedly for revenue allocation, but why didn't the mechanical machines create a tabulated (or not) audit roll in parallel which could have easily been used for this very purpose? At least from the early twentieth century this would have been fairly easy to do and the technology was there (see tabulating machines, where IBM got their start...)

I think there is possibly a misunderstanding here. Tickets were pre-printed and numbered (usually Edmondson Cards) then stamped with the date when issued. Ticket Offices held stocks of their popular sellers and blanks for writing in details for tickets that were not in stock. These were usually stored in wooden ticket racks built to Edmondson Card size. I don't know but I guess sales were all recorded with the records regularly sent to the Railway Clearing House. I don't think there was anything that resembled mechanical machines creating a tabulated (or not) audit roll. I do remember such tickets in the 1970s: I don't know when they were introduced but suspect it was after Nationalisation.

As it happens Great Central Railway Auctions have just published a catalogue for a forthcoming ticket auction, which includes tickets going back to pre-grouping days. If you are interested then I suggest that you take a look.

Tickets were collected at end of journey mainly to prevent them from being used more than once.

 

[John Webb]

........Tickets were collected at end of journey mainly to prevent them from being used more than once.

It should also be remembered that the majority of terminii in London and in other towns/cities had 'Cab Roads' in between two arrivals platforms where the longer distance expresses were terminated. So, for the convenience of passengers, people could get straight off the train with their luggage and into a cab. Hence the need to collect the tickets from passengers on the train prior to arrival at the end of the journey as they would not pass the equivilent of today's 'gateline'.

.....Moreover I understand that as today passengers had a choice when travelling on Anglo-Scottish routes between the East and West coast, much as today, but that competition was largely on service standards, at least in the Big Four era. Presumably there were no dedicated fares and fares were divvied up (and set?) by the RCH? I suspect a lot of this has been lost to history but where might I find details on this? Is there anyone knowledgeable on the subject on this very forum?
.....

The Railway Clearing House was first set up in the 1840s due to the problems of differing fares and freight rates on the many railways, compounded by the reluctance of some to accept through routing from one line to another and no consistant classification of goods that were carried. Most railway companies had joined the RCH by the 1870s. The RCH did not set fares or freight rates - that was up to individual companies.
The RCH also helped co-ordinate common practices between the companies over the decades, starting off with recommending 'Greenwich Time' should be used on all railways in 1847 and then freight classification, rules on signalling, standards for freight wagons and the like. The RCH operated under BR until 1963.

 

[Sir Felix Pole]

All fares were based on mileage, and each station had a 'mileage book' enabling a fare to be calculated to any other station at the appropriate rate, (Single, Return(x2), First (+50%) etc. ). There were some complications, for example, if you wanted to book to a station in Ireland, and wished to travel First on the boat, but Third on the train. The 'mileage' was not necessarily the real mileage, for where there were competing companies and routes a standard figure was often agreed (usually the shortest). Perhaps the most extreme example, of interest only to enthusiasts of the era, was that the LMS would sell you a ticket at Euston to Swansea (via Stafford, Shrewsbury and Central Wales) for the same price as taking the GWR directly from Paddington. From the 1920s as road competition kicked in, there were some commercial initiatives, such as 'Cheap Day Returns' for local journeys and 'Monthly Returns' for longer ones.