Old Ticket Machines

[pitdiver]

Not sure whether this is the right section. But a number of years ago I regularly purchased tickets at Euston Ticket Office. They would have had a machine which the Ticket Clerk would hold a handle and slide it across some sort of screen then up and down this same screen. Can anybody tell me what this machine was called and how did they work. What happened to them.

 

[sheff1]

I used those when working at Birmingham New St in the 1970s but have no idea what they were called.

Inside the machine there were metal printing plates - one for each ticket. When you lined up the line with the ticket location on the display the relevant ticket plate was selected inside the machine and the details were printed onto the card ticket which was than spat out for issue to the customer.

I never had cause to open up the machine so cannot say exactly how they worked but they were very well oiled - for a popular ticket, where you knew its location, you could swing the handle across to the correct position with the lightest of touches in seconds. I also remember that when there was a fare change it took a team of people working overnight to replace all the plates ready for the next morning.

As you can imagine the number of different tickets was far too many for there to be room for all the plates to be held on one machine, hence the booking office windows were labelled 'Destinations A-E', 'Destinations F-L' etc. Late in the evening only a couple of windows in the centre of the office were manned, selling all tickets, which meant quite a bit of walking for destinations beginning with, say, A or W.

At least one found its way to the museum at York but not sure whether it is on display now.

 

[6Gman]

I remember those at Crewe - always fascinated me, it was like watching a 2-dimensional sliderule at work!

 

[davetheguard]

I remember there being one at Paddington too. It printed out tickets on a small piece of card. I'm not sure if it's correct to call these Edmonson card tickets or not; but they were certainly the same sort of size, but the date was printed along with the rest of the journey information - they didn't need to be put in a machine punch to apply it.

 

[Welshman]

I also remember them.

I think they were British Railway's first attempt to mass-produce tickets "on demand". Blank cards, the same size as the traditional Edmondson ticket, were used, their colour chosen depending upon what type of ticket was being bought [1st class, 2nd class, etc]

I remember as a young man being most impressed with them at the rebuilt Manchester Piccadilly [ex London Rd] in the 1960s. Taking-up almost all the room available, these were one of the signs of the "modern" railway!

Although issuing the same size of ticket I don't think they technically were Edmondson tickets, as they were pre-printed at a printers away from the station. Also, if I remember correctly, the outward portion of a return ticket was not half the size like the traditional Edmondson, but a quarter the size, giving a rather lop-sided appearance.

 

[aptisman]

The machine was the AEG Multiprinter.

 

[edwin_m]

I remember those at Manchester Piccadilly too. Must have been a WCML modernisation thing.

 

[aptisman]

Not all WCML stations had them.

Stations which had them include:- Birmingham New Street, Brentwood & Warley, Bristol TM, Bury St Edmunds, Chippenham, Colchester, Coventry, Ealing Broadway, Enfield Town, Gidea Park, Ipswich, London Euston, Manchester Piccadilly, Nottingham, Nuneaton TV, Paddington, Reading General, Shenfield & Hutton, Stafford, Tamworth, Whitton

 

[Murph]

You might find this interesting:

http://www.pendragonpublishing.co.uk/Please_shew_all_Tickets.pdf

Apparently LNER were the first to install the AEG Multiprinter, in 1931 at Newcastle upon Tyne, but it wasn't until 1959 in the BR era that they started to appear widely.

There's a photo in this forum post:

http://www.lner.info/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3429&start=45#p28260

NRM seem to have one in their collection, but don't have any online photos of it.