What machines were used by Guards to issue tickets onboard trains before the PORTIS/SPORTIS machines.

[busestrains]

Can anyone help me with remembering what was used by Guards to sell tickets onboard trains before the PORTIS/SPORTIS machines were introduced?

So currently since the late 2010s they use a mixture of Atos Worldline Envoy and Fujitsu Star Mobile and TTK Mobile Doris depending on the TOC which are all just smartphones or tablets connected to printers.

From around the early 2000s to the late 2010s they used Avantix Mobile machines.

From around the early 1980s to the early 2000s they used the PORTIS/SPORTIS machines.

But what was used before the PORTIS/SPORTIS machines? My mind has gone blank for before then and i can not seem to remember what was used? Was there another type of electronic machine? Or was it just handwritten tickets?

 

[Trestrol]

A handwritten ticket book, could have been an excess fare book. If I can find my old ticket examiners handbook I will check. From memory they were two copies, one for the passenger and one retained by the guard.

 

[Snow1964]

I think on some lines there was a portable machine similar to those used by bus conductors at the time, but they could only issue a limited selection of tickets to the branch line destinations.

Anything else was hand written on a carbon copy book

 

[Shaw S Hunter]

I'm not convinced that there was necessarily a national standard machine but it is safe to say that such machines were similar to those used by conductors on buses (and trams back in the day!). As such the most likely candidates would be Almex and Setright. Growing up I had the novelty of a Paytrain route in a sea of fully staffed stations with booking offices, namely what is now known as the North Downs Line. The tickets were just like bus tickets with little information on them regarding the journey covered beyond the fare paid. Doubtless there were codes printed denoting stations but I don't remember there being any through fares being available.

 

[RT4038]

I'm not convinced that there was necessarily a national standard machine but it is safe to say that such machines were similar to those used by conductors on buses (and trams back in the day!). As such the most likely candidates would be Almex and Setright. Growing up I had the novelty of a Paytrain route in a sea of fully staffed stations with booking offices, namely what is now known as the North Downs Line. The tickets were just like bus tickets with little information on them regarding the journey covered beyond the fare paid. Doubtless there were codes printed denoting stations but I don't remember there being any through fares being available.

Through fares were simply not available, at least not from conductors. Many lines had no through fares at all when Paytrains were first introduced (particularly ER), but later through tickets were often available from off line booking offices/agencies etc.

Various types of ticket machines were used, depending on the region. LMR used (I think) an Omniprinter machine, the ER used Almex 'A' type machines (later much used on buses) Prior to this various regions used the Setright 'Speed' ticket machine which was the pretty standard 'territorial' provincial bus company machine. The Setright 'Speed' was not well liked by railway auditors due to the lack of an audit roll, which the other machines possessed. Quite possibly other machines were used too? Those lines operated on a paytrain system before that term became in use, such as Gloucester-Chalford auto trains (there were others too) Bell Punch machine and a rack of tickets were used. There is quite a history and the Transport Ticket Society will be able to give chapter and verse!

 

[theblackwatch]

I lived on a paytrain route in the 70s and although I was only a child I can remember the guard had what I would call a bus conductor's ticket machine. Tickets issued were pink and around 1 inch square in size, and from what I remember were just issued to other stations on my local line. I'm not even sure that return tickets were available!

 

[Hassocks5489]

There is quite a history and the Transport Ticket Society will be able to give chapter and verse!

We certainly can! Over the years the Society has published numerous monographs and books on different ticket machines, including in 2014 The Omniprinter Portable Ticket Machine and its use with British Railways, which really is the last word in Omniprinter information*. A quick look at my copy indicates that Omniprinters were first used by conductor-guards in April 1962 on the Marston Vale Line. As RT4038 says, Almex A and Setright Speed machines were generally used before that, and the Scottish Region generally hung on to these rather than moving to Omniprinters as elsewhere.

*This is available for purchase in hard copy, but members of the Transport Ticket Society are able to download a high-quality PDF copy from our extensive Virtual Library of TTS publications.

 

[30907]

Doubtless there were codes printed denoting stations but I don't remember there being any through fares being available.

Some machines had a handful of popular "off-route" destinations listed, but that's all. The first Selective Pricing Manual I used back in 1978 had a range of fares to/from Paytrain lines that could only be used to fulfil a Travel Warrant.

 

[Hassocks5489]

Here's an example of the list of codes on a randomly chosen Omniprinter ticket illustrated in the TTS publication referred to above. I'll leave it to your imagination as to which lines this ticket may have been issued on! These codes were printed across three columns.

19 Blackburn
20 Liverpool Ex.
21 Kirkham & W.
22 Accrington
24 Lytham
25 Ansdell & F.
26 St Annes
27 Squires Gate
28 Blackpool S.
30 Manchester V.
35 Salwick
56 Southport
57 Blackpool N.
58 Westhoughton
59 Clifton
60 Bolton
61 Kearsley
62 Farnworth
63 Moses Gate
64 Blackrod
65 Adlington
66 Chorley
67 Pemberton
68 Orrell
69 Upholland
70 Rainford
71 Kirkby
72 Fazakerley
73 Preston Road
74 Kirkdale
75 Sandhills
81 Salford
82 Pendleton
88 Hindley
89 Ince
90 Wigan W.
91 Gathurst
92 Appley Br.
93 Parbold
94 Hoscar
95 Burscough Br.
96 New Lane
97 Bescar Lane
98 Meols Cop

 

[Bevan Price]

Some examples here:

And here:

(Second file has so far failed to upload.)

 

[Hassocks5489]

The examples illustrated above are from a Setright machine, which were often used on Paytrain routes.

 

[Springs Branch]

Was there another type of electronic machine? Or was it just handwritten tickets?

A handwritten ticket book, could have been an excess fare book. If I can find my old ticket examiners handbook I will check. From memory they were two copies, one for the passenger and one retained by the guard.

In the late 1970s & early 80s, whenever I used local trains on the Southport - Wigan - Manchester lines in the evening (when local booking offices had shut), it would be a case of a hand-written ticket with carbon copy from the guard's excess fare pad - these not being full time PayTrain routes at the time, bus conductor-style ticket machines were not provided.

Guards never carried a cash bag either, just had a pocket seemingly heavy with change and a wad of £1 notes in their jacket inside pocket. (More often than not, however, there was no ticket at all, as the guard didn't appear - especially later at night)

An uncle was an administrator in the pharmacy side of the NHS at that time and recounted that an astonishing number of blank doctors' prescription pads went 'missing' each year. No doubt to later re-appear filled out with prescriptions (plus an illegible doctor's signature) for the more desirable or re-saleable pharmaceuticals kept in the dispensary's locked cupboard.

I wondered whether this might occasionally happen with BR excess fare pads too, and if any of the apparently diligent fare-collecting guards were ever writing out tickets with two pads in their pocket - "one for The Railway, one for me"?

I suppose this fiddle would be easy enough to pick up if a TTI boarded the train, but we certainly never saw any of these on local DMUs on Friday or Saturday evenings.

 

[Ashley Hill]

I wondered whether this might occasionally happen with BR excess fare pads too, and if any of the apparently diligent fare-collecting guards were ever writing out tickets with two pads in their pocket - "one for The Railway, one for me"?

Sadly that did happen. One guard at an adjacent depot was selling them in his local pub. He was subsequently found out and sacked. I can’t remember if he was arrested or not as BR tolerated many things but not theft.

 

[Cheshire Scot]

I wondered whether this might occasionally happen with BR excess fare pads too, and if any of the apparently diligent fare-collecting guards were ever writing out tickets with two pads in their pocket - "one for The Railway, one for me"?

I suppose this fiddle would be easy enough to pick up if a TTI boarded the train, but we certainly never saw any of these on local DMUs on Friday or Saturday evenings.

Should also be picked up in any ticket stock check or audit as there would / should have been a record of what number series book(s) were issue and returned when used.

 

[Bevan Price]

Second attempt to upload more paytrain ticket photos:

 

[Dr Hoo]

Should also be picked up in any ticket stock check or audit as there would / should have been a record of what number series book(s) were issue and returned when used.

Exactly. This was a regular part of checks at locations where a booking office issued BR4407 'Excess books' to guards. You knew exactly who had been issued with which book and each guard could only have one book at a time.

 

[Taunton]

I think the Gloucester-Chalford auto train guards, whose ticketing went back to when the GWR, as an experiment, built all the halts every mile or more up the Stroud valley and ran an hourly service with push-pull single carriages (abandoned 1964), used the tickets described above as Setright, which were the same as the railway-associated Bristol buses in the same area.

Regarding hand-written tickets, old contact from Taunton who was somewhere round Hexham in WW2 apparently used to ask for a return ticket to Brampton (minor station on the Carlisle line), which was not available preprinted, and thus scrawly hand-written at the ticket office, price 1/9 (one shilling nine pence). They would then alter the price in the same black ink to 51/9 (fifty one shillings and nine pence, that is how high value tickets were commonly written rather than with pounds), and travel home on leave. Travelling ticket collectors on say LNER approaching York, and LMS near Birmingham, would ask where Brampton was - "Bampton, it's on the Exe Valley line, change at Dulverton". The fare of course looked, and was, right for that. "Oh ... OK, change at Taunton as well".

 

[Bevan Price]

This was a Bell Punch ticket, as sold by guards on the Maldon East branch just before it closed.

 

[MadMac]

Sadly that did happen. One guard at an adjacent depot was selling them in his local pub. He was subsequently found out and sacked. I can’t remember if he was arrested or not as BR tolerated many things but not theft.

On the Motherwell via Queen's Park electrics on Sundays, none of the stations other than Motherwell were manned, so the guard came round with a bus-style ticket machine. The trains were non-corridor, so anyone wishing to dodge could easily do so.

Not wishing to drift too far OT, but there was a fellow at a depot I worked at who submitted a doctor's note for a week, and submitted another some months later. A sharp-eyed clerkess spotted that the two were consecutively numbered. Enquiries revealed that the individual wasn't a patient at the practice and that the notes came from a pad stolen a year or so previously.....

 

[urpert]

I remember being issued handwritten tickets from a carbon pad at Sydenham Hill in 1989, probably during the refurbishment which installed a proper NSE ticket office on the up platform (and during which there was a Portakabin ticket office in the car park).

 

[LowLevel]

Peterborough booking office was still issuing carbon paper book excesses a year or two ago.