BR ticket offices not at a station

[6PAN]

The recent thread about independent ticket offices at stations reminded me that British Rail themselves ran a number of ticket offices and travel centres that were not at a railway station.

London had BR Travel Centres at Rex House 4-12 Regent Street, Victoria Street, King William Street, The Strand and Oxford Street. Heathrow Airport also had one before it was connected to the main line network.

There were BR ticket offices at places only served by railway operated ferries such as Hull Corporation Pier, Dartmouth and Yarmouth (IoW).

BR also set up a temporary one at the Wimbledon tennis championships for several years in the 1970s/80s.

Were there others?

 

[The exile]

Am I imagining it, but wasn’t there even one in Paris?

 

[Djgr]

Unless I am mistaken, Castle Street Liverpool

 

[Beebman]

Sometime in the early 90s (i.e. before HEx) I'm sure I can remember buying a ticket for the Railair coach to Reading from a BR-owned ticket office at Heathrow T1.

 

[Mcr Warrior]

Not sure this quite counts for the purposes of this thread, but vaguely recall once being on an internal flight inbound to London Gatwick Airport where the cabin crew were endeavouring to sell rail tickets valid for the Gatwick Express into London Victoria.

 

[6PAN]

Not sure this quite counts for the purposes of this thread, but vaguely recall once being on an internal flight inbound to London Gatwick Airport where the cabin crew were endeavouring to sell rail tickets valid for the Gatwick Express into London Victoria.

True, but as you say not on topic as they would have acted as independent retailers earning commission on the sale.

 

[SuspectUsual]

I'm 99% sure there was one in Dublin in the late 1980s

 

[Dr Hoo]

The was one in Douglas, Isle of Man, in the 1960s.

 

[ac6000cw]

There was a BR one on the A38/Bristol Road in the midst of the (Austin/BMC/British Leyland/Rover etc.) Longbridge car factory. It was a leftover from when local passenger trains ran on the line between Halesowen Junction (on the Birmingham - Bristol mainline) and Old Hill via Halesowen. Those ceased in 1919 except for a few unadvertised 'workers' trains that continued until 1960. It primarily sold tickets etc. to people who worked at the factory. AFAIK it closed when the new Longbridge station on the Cross City line opened in 1978.

 

[SargeNpton]

International offices in Paris, Brussels, Dublin and New York.

I once applied for a job at the New York office, but didn't get it. I also had to travel on a day trip to Brussels via Eurostar to fix a computer in that office.

 

[Sir Felix Pole]

Am I imagining it, but wasn’t there even one in Paris?

Yes on the Blvd. de la Madeline. This was inherited from the Big Four who had set up a joint operation pre WW2. It also had offices in other European cities (and Manhattan) and many of the European railways had their own offices in London - notably SNCF in Piccadilly.

Dilton Marsh in Wiltshire - tickets could be obtained from a private house away from the Halt during the '50s.

 

[Rescars]

Does anyone know anything about the history of the King William Street office. Was it in any way connected with proximity of Bank station and the Waterloo and City line?

 

[Taunton]

There were USA ones in New York and Los Angeles. I heard the New York one had a streetfront public entrance, but the LA one was a couple of rooms (presumably - I never went in) up in a fine 1920s Art-Deco architectural style office building downtown at 510 6th Street. This one:

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/510+W+6th+St,+Los+Angeles,+CA+90014,+USA/@34.0483774,-118.2547387,84a,90y,192.23h,117.46t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sTJz_8glxYB905aDHPAI6hQ!2e0!6shttps://streetviewpixels-pa.clients6.google.com/v1/thumbnail?cb_client=maps_sv.tactile&w=900&h=600&pitch=-27.462970570855603&panoid=TJz_8glxYB905aDHPAI6hQ&yaw=192.23045244264304!7i16384!8i8192!4m6!3m5!1s0x80c2c7b4ee4da66f:0xfc22f3ccedfa472b!8m2!3d34.0481417!4d-118.2549007!16s/g/11bw3xgw2v?entry=ttu

They were principally wholesale offices for promoting and selling rail tickets, notably BritRail and InterRail passes, through travel agents. In the 1970s I met a number of American university students in Britain who had come armed with such passes, bought in this way, though I presume if you managed to get in they could sell you regular tickets on the spot. The building also had a large number of overseas airline offices run the same way, who had congregated there (New York one the same).

The question has come up here before and someone else also posted an advertisement from British Rail in a 1960s USA travel magazine which listed the addresses, and others on the thread had worked in these offices:

British Railways Overseas Offices

Can anyone shed any light on BR's offices overseas? I've noticed in old timetables that there were definitely ones in Paris and Brussels, and the timetable also gives me one in Jersey and one in Guernsey, but I'm imagining there were others. The USA perhaps? What sort of services did they...

www.railforums.co.uk

 

[Dr Hoo]

Does anyone know anything about the history of the King William Street office. Was it in any way connected with proximity of Bank station and the Waterloo and City line?

I have heard that it was originally a South Eastern Railway parcels office that was, amazingly, freehold. Hence it went to the Southern Railway and then the BTC/BR. At some point it was re-purposed. Very close to the ‘City Travel Centre’ at Cannon Street Station. I never really understood why it lasted so long.

(Never seen anything in writing on its origins.)

 

[6PAN]

That’s very interesting. A similar story to 407 Oxford Street which was taken by the GWR on a long lease in the late 19th century as a ticket and parcels office. The ensuing low rent probably played a significant part in its survival into BR days and rebranding as a travel centre. It is now a coffee shop.

 

[WesternLancer]

Am I imagining it, but wasn’t there even one in Paris?

Well SNCF had one in London until not so long ago.

I think I’ve seen references to one in new York in old BR literature. Maybe in the 1950s. Perhaps aimed at transatlantic shipping passengers at that time.

Edit. I note others posted interesting info about various international offices that I didn’t see before posting this.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: Today at 01:19 ==

I think Brighton had one. Known as the ‘Town’ ticket office.

My source for this is a recollection of it being mentioned by the author of the website http://www.1s76.com/ (about the Sussex Scot and similar services from Brighton), Andy Gibbs.
I'm sure I recall reading on his site that he worked at Brighton station and he mentions that he occasionally did stints working at the 'town office' as opposed to the station ticket office. I can't find the page where this is mentioned at the time of posting this.
I may of course be wrong.

 

[101DMU]

I worked in the New York office during the seventies. First on a 6 month secondment then on a 3 year follow up. The office was then based at 270 Madison Avenue with sub offices in Boston and Chicago. We had a walk in section but mainly dealt with ticket requests from Travel Agents. I'm not sure when the Los Angeles office closed but it certainly was not operating when I was in the USA.

 

[Beebman]

I've also been looking at old forum threads and I found a post in this thread from 2020 which links to an unofficial 39-page PDF document on the Internet Archive from (apparently) 2004 which lists APTIS machine locations:

https://web.archive.org/web/2018081...sl.pipex.com/machines/aptis.pdf?showpage=true

Of interest to this thread is Section 2 'Travel Centres and Offices' starting on page 30 which lists machine locations which aren't at stations but are at Travel Centres, Telesales and Business Travel Offices (travel agents are listed separately in Section 4). It includes places mentioned in this thread such as King William Street, Liverpool Castle Street and Heathrow T1 (plus T2 & T4).

 

[Taunton]

I worked in the New York office during the seventies. First on a 6 month secondment then on a 3 year follow up. The office was then based at 270 Madison Avenue with sub offices in Boston and Chicago. We had a walk in section but mainly dealt with ticket requests from Travel Agents. I'm not sure when the Los Angeles office closed but it certainly was not operating when I was in the USA.

Did the New York office have a street frontage or was it up in an office block ?

I was in LA for the years around 1980 and believed the BR office on 6th Street was there from its entry in the LA phone book with an address and a downtown number, though I never went to it. If it was like the overseas airline offices in the same building it would have maintained a particular relationship with the Hollywood studios, who did an enormous amount of travelling round the world, more than anywhere to Britain.