TRIVIA: On-board ticket vending machines

[AY1975]

On-board ticket vending machines are common on trains serving unstaffed stations (and on buses and trams) in some countries in mainland Europe such as Germany, but the only instance of them I know of in the UK are the entrance turnstiles with self-service machines that were installed on some London buses for a short time in the 1970s.

Does anyone know of any other UK transport networks that have ever had on-board TVMs?

 

[Springs Branch]

Also in the 1970s, a few bus operators - Lancashire United Transport and Sheffield being examples - used a Videmat Self Service system.

You dropped the exact fare in a slot, pushed a big, chunky, 1970s-style button and the machine printed your ticket, which was basically a copy of the coins you'd just dropped in, plus some extra info (probably date, time, fare stage etc).

Some pics of the Sheffield system are here, but the machines used on LUT's Bolton to Leigh route were similar.
http://publictransportexperience.blogspot.com/2010/09/thats-just-ticket.html

Before this, in the late 1960s, Manchester City Transport trialled a turnstile system called Minimax on some of their routes (including the 53 "Circular", IIRC). This required exact change (an old sixpence) in the slot, but I suspect it didn't issue a ticket so wasn't really a TVM as per the OP's question.

Hardware for both Videmat and Minimax were unreliable and the system open to fare dodging (even in the good old days when most people were supposed to be honest) and neither lasted very long, nor was extensively deployed by those operators who trialled them.

 

[dazzler]

When First York introduced the FTR buses in 2006 they were introduced with on-board ticket machines, just inside the front door behind the driver's cab. They were extremely unreliable, very variable as to what coins they would accept and, even when working correctly, very slow resulting in long queues waiting to board at stops - on more than one occasion I was on an FTR which stopped at the main University stop for over 25 minutes as passengers tried to board and pay - this on a nominally 8 minute service!

The ticket machines didn't last long and were replaced by conductors, which meant that a full busload of over 100 could board at the Uni and then pay the conductor on the way into York.

 

[Springs Branch]

According to the appendix at the end of the report linked below (from the Transport and Road Research Laboratory), the Videmat on-board self-service ticket machines were trialled by the following operators in the 1970s:-

• City of Cardiff Transport
• Leicester City Transport
• Sheffield City Transport -> SYPTE

Other Videmat users not listed in the report are:-

• Lancashire United Transport (before take-over by GMPTE) - on Leigh/Bolton route 82.
• West Midlands PTE - machines proposed in Wolverhampton as means of converting a fleet of fairly new half-cab buses to OPO - one machine installed, but never implemented as originally planned.

There may have been more, since the TRRL report makes no mention of fare collection systems for several significant operators e.g. Edinburgh.

https://trl.co.uk/sites/default/files/SR629.pdf

 

[61653 HTAFC]

Not a ticket machine as such, but a way of self validating: In the 1980s WYPTE had a system called Saverstrip which was basically a bookmark-shaped card which had a number of perforated tabs on them. These were sold at post-offices, bus stations and some corner shops.

Buses had machines with a slot in the top by the door, so one would insert the Saverstrip bottom-first into the slot, where the next perforated section would be clipped off.
There were different versions for the different fares, all colour-coded, and were effectively a sort of Carnet ticket, or a bit like those hexagonal Saver tickets that TfL had in the early 2000s.