Of tickets and gauges
Tony Olsson’s letter about printing tickets in NGW157 caught my interest. I first volunteered on the Talyllyn Railway at Towyn in 1953 (aged about 13) and continued to do so over the next ten years. Then I married Pauline and with the two boys we wanted to spend our week’s annual holiday riding on trains rather than working on them.
Like Tony I began letterpress printing at school and when I left I invested £5 in the Adana printing machine, advertised in the Meccano Magazine. Tiny though it was, it was ideal for Edmondson tickets, which I had been avidly collecting since 1948.
My offer to print tickets for the Talyllyn’s special trains (capacity 240 seats) was quickly taken up by general manager David Woodhouse, who had previously ordered larger cards from Barmouth Printers.
Over the next 60 years I printed many thousands of tickets for the TR and several other narrow gauge lines – Leighton Buzzard, Romney, Ratty (Ravenglass) and the Welshpool & Llanfair (for the ‘Old Fahrts Days’ for older members). David asked me to help the Teifi Valley for whom I made all the tickets in the first couple of years and I also produced tickets for standard gauge lines, BR and South West Trains while employed by them; it was a good thing I shared my office with the divisional auditor.
Printing in this way is a timeconsuming process but it is a way to help your chosen railway from home, useful when (like us) you live more than 200 miles away. This does not help the current crisis of a lack of blank ticket suppliers but over the years I am lucky enough to have begged, borrowed or bought small stocks of card which are enough for my present production for my local line here in Cornwall at Launceston.
Since I started all that, we have gained these new-fangled computer things and for very short runs I have set up first the serial numbers and then the text of the ticket on my keyboard, using a label programme for 21 on a sheet.
This I printed off on coloured paper which I stuck with spray mount to a thicker card (the backs of A4 pads are ideal) and stuck a second paper sheet behind to produce the traditional pasteboard sandwich recommended in the 1840s by Mr Edmondson. I then cut them to strips and chopped to singles on a hand guillotine – if the tickets are to be stored in a conventional rack, it is important that they are squarely cut and accurate to size.
Tony Farr
Andrew C adds: Tony has produced a short piece on the printing of Edmondson-style tickets which we will be running in a forthcoming edition of NGW.
“Over the next 60 years I printed many thousands of tickets for the TR and several other narrow gauge lines”