Thomas Edmondson
Thomas Edmondson (born June 30, 1792 in Lancaster , † June 22, 1851 in Manchester ) was the inventor of the ticket system named after him and widespread until the 1980s, the Edmondson ticket , often incorrectly called the Edmonson ticket. Alternative terms are cardboard ticket or Pappfahrkarte respectively carton billet or Pappbillett .
In 1836 Edmondson became station master of the small Milton station on the newly opened Newcastle - Carlisle railway line . The usual issue of small pieces of paper as tickets, adopted from the stagecoach era, did not satisfy him and he began to develop a new ticket system. The system he developed spread and Edmondson was promoted to director of the Manchester and Leeds Railway . In addition to the tickets themselves, platform cards were also minted according to his system in many places.
Edmondson's ticket
In order to have better control, accounting and checking of the tickets sold, he built a machine that prints small cardboard strips with the format 30.5 mm × 57 mm (1 3/16 "× 2¼") and about 580 g / m² weight and could number. Next to it was a special cupboard in which the tickets were kept - the so-called Ternion - and a date press with which the tickets could be dated. Soon several other stations on his line adopted this system. Captain Law, executive director of the Manchester and Leeds Railway , also recognized the possibilities of this revolutionary system and hired Thomas Edmondson as director. He introduced his system at all stations on this railway. The design of the issuing machine and the date press was successful right from the start, only the very complicated machines for printing and progressive numbering of tickets were only the result of gradual improvements.
Today Edmondson's tickets are almost exclusively used by museum railways .
Germany
Since the era of the Länderbahn , the key color of the tickets corresponded to the customary vehicle class-specific paintwork of the passenger coaches at the time . For example, tickets for single journeys in the inexpensive 4th class offered until 1928 were gray, 3rd class ocher brown and 2nd class grass green. The yellow tickets for the luxurious 1st class, which are only offered in a few, mostly international, long-distance trains, were abolished on July 3, 1956, when most European railways combined the two "upholstered classes" (1st / 2nd class) into 1st class and the upgrade previous "wood class" (3rd class) to 2nd class. Accordingly, from now on tickets were issued at the normal price in brown and for the higher comfort level in green.
Double tickets (return trip for one person or single trip for two people) were only half colored vertically in brown or green, and children's tickets were marked with a white border in the upper quarter. Both tickets for long-distance trains subject to a surcharge (express or express trains) and discounted season tickets for workers and schoolchildren were also designed using variants of the class-specific basic color. For example, the popular Sunday return ticket was given a wide blue central stripe.
Switzerland
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In Switzerland, with the 2007/2008 timetable change, the sale of Edmondson tickets was almost completely stopped. Since December 10, 2007, rail, bus and shipping companies are only allowed to issue cardboard tickets for journeys on their own network. Few railways and shipping companies make use of this, such as the Stanserhorn Railway and the Wilderswil – Schynige Platte railway line , which does not have a power connection at the Breitlauenen station.
Children's and half-price tickets were white at the top (and in the respective class color at the bottom, brown for 2nd and green for 1st class; see illustration). Children's fares (later also for Half-Fare Card holders) were half as expensive as for adults. There were no preprinted children's tickets on routes that were rarely used. Here the official issued a “whole ticket” at half price and cut off a strip at the bottom as proof of his accounting (about 1/4 of the ticket). For this purpose, the price was printed twice on such tickets, so that both the customer and the officer each had a receipt showing the price (whereby both had to divide the price by 2, since in this case only half was paid). For example, smaller (cheaper) ticket boxes with fewer compartments could be used at less frequented stations, and reorders were made faster.
Billing was done manually based on the ticket numbers before and after the shift. So that not all tickets in the boxes had to be checked for consecutive numbers, the stacks were printed on the side with a line running diagonally upwards. Since cardboard tickets are very thick, missing tickets in the stack (removed from them) could be seen immediately, which prevented colleague fraud. This also significantly reduced the (manual) control effort for the stacks of tickets.
The cardboard tickets were ordered and obtained from a company specializing in tickets. Later there were special ticket printing machines at ticket sales counters that printed tickets individually at the time of sale using curved, insertable printing plates. The printing plates for each route were coded with the tariff kilometers. The printer calculated the ticket price based on the current tariff kilometer prices and printed it on the ticket regardless of the cliché. Printing plates did not have to be replaced when the tariff changed.
Since it was not economical to have all possible connections on hand in preprinted forms or printing plates, pads were still required for handwritten tickets. These were especially used for round trips, the composition of which was then written out and put together from route books with so-called tariff kilometers. The tariff kilometers did not necessarily correspond to the distances traveled. For routes with many engineering structures, the tariff kilometers were higher than the track length. These tariff kilometers were also found in the course books for a long time, so that you could calculate the fare yourself. The tariff kilometer system, however, had reached its limits with the expansion of the railway (S-Bahn; parallel lines, tariff associations, etc.) and was replaced in the 1980s by a different tariff setting. The prices were now available on request, and later on the Internet.
Edmondson's tickets are printed in Switzerland
In the Albula Railway Museum there is both a printing press for use at the ticket office and a functioning ticket printer for Edmondsonian tickets.
The machine of the central ticket printer of the Rhaetian Railway
The explanation board in the museum
The machine for decentralized individual printing at the ticket office
Ticket office machine controls
Ticket cabinet in the railway museum
The lock of the ticket box
Sorting of tickets according to location, car class, price scheme (full price / 1/2 price)
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Other uses
In the 1980s, the Romanian national airline TAROM also issued Edmondson-style tickets for domestic flights .
literature
- Hermann Lohr: Tickets in Germany . Barteld Verlag, 2004, ISBN 3-935961-05-7 .
Web links
- Thomas Edmondson and his tickets
- Labeling of Edmondson tickets
- Color variants of the Edmondson tickets
- System of ticket validation
- Production of tickets for the Czech railway company Jindřichohradecké místní dráhy
Individual evidence
- ^ Richard Deiss: Milton and the cardboard ticket. (Google Books) In: Vane Cathedral and Sugar Beet Station: Little Stories about 222 Railway Stations in Europe. 2011, p. 71 , accessed January 6, 2013 ( ISBN 978-3839129135 ).
- ^ Alfred Horn: Wiener Stadtbahn. 90 years of light rail, 10 years of underground. Bohmann-Verlag, Vienna 1988, ISBN 3-7002-0678-X , p. 170.
- ↑ Switzerland- wide : SCHEDULE CHANGE: Edmondson's ticket disappears ( memento of the original from July 19, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ The fastest way is via Worb NZZ from September 11, 2007, accessed on September 14, 2015
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Edmondson, Thomas |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | English inventor |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 30, 1792 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Lancaster |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 22, 1851 |
| Place of death | Manchester |