WEEK-END TICKETS.
HUSBANDS’ TRAINS.
The immediate success attending the reintroduction of week-end tickets, more especially to the seaside resorts nearest to London, has been phenomenal. “There are many figures I could give you,” said a railway official to a representative of The Daily Telegraph yesterday, “but I shall not do so, because they convey a very imperfect idea of what happened. The bare fact that between 30,000 and 40,000 people left one station alone in twelve hours is a statement which would leave nine people out of every ten cold. It does not fire the imagination; but let the public realise the feverish animation beating through all the great London termini in the rush hours of last Saturday, the crowds surging round the booking offices, the rush to the departure platforms, the crowded trains as they steamed out of the stations for their coastal destinations and then, behind the scenes, orders given and promptly carried out for duplicate and even triplicate trains to be made up – let the inquirer see all this for himself, and he will realise at once that the week-end ticket has resumed its old position of favour with the public.”
An official of the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway stated that the tremendous rush had been most gratifying to the company, showing that the public appreciated the greater facilities for travelling that were now offered to them. No fewer than thirty trains were duplicated to cope with the exodus for the week-end from London to the popular resorts on this south-coast line. Brighton was easily first favourite, but there was not a town along the coast; from Hastings to Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight which was not in the booking list and to which people did not go, taking advantage of these tickets, available from Saturday to Monday, and issued at a cost of about a single fare and a third. The only restriction placed on ticket-holders – and the official was speaking only of the Brighton line; different conditions may be imposed on other lines – is that they must not return on Sunday by any train before six a.m. This is certainly not an onerous condition. Otherwise, on the return journey on Sunday or Monday any train can be used. Passengers may take 60lb of luggage free of charge.
The week-end system on the Brighton line includes week-ends at Dieppe, without the necessity of obtaining passports. In this case the cheap return tickets are issued every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday up to Sept. 25. Many people went over last week-end for the Dieppe races on Saturday, and there are meetings again at the next two week-ends. Our informant could not suggest any reason why the railway companies, who are acting jointly in this matter of week-end tickets, should not have returned to the system which prevailed before the war of issuing tickets from Friday till Tuesday. An official of another line suggested that railway managers, now that the railways had been decontrolled, found themselves faced with an entirely new problem, and in this, as in other matters, would have to proceed warily. Officials of both the Brighton and the South-eastern Railways agreed that there was every reason to believe the week-end tickets had been adopted as a permanent measure, and not limited to the summer months only. The authorities of the South Eastern and Chatham Railway are equally satisfied with the result of the first week-end experience.
“Fathers’ trains” would be a fitting name for these week-end trains, in consequence of the great number of City men who travelled to the coast on Saturday, obviously bent on spending the week-end with their families already at the seaside. The South-eastern have also extended these facilities to take in the other side of the Channel, issuing cheap tickets every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday till the end of September for Ostend, Boulogne, and Calais. These facilities were fully made use of during the past week-end.
As was expected, the nearer seaside towns proved the most popular week-end resorts, and there were few inquiries for tickets to places at long distances from town. From Waterloo the London and South-western Railway Company booked fewer than 500 week-end passengers; but while this is not regarded as very satisfactory, it should be remembered that the nearest coast town on this system is Portsmouth, and that the list of stations to which the new facilities extend is much smaller than the pre-war list. Indeed, the present scheme of week-end tickets must be looked upon as only a beginning The railway companies, just free from State control, have to proceed carefully, and an immediate resumption of all the pre-war facilities was not to be expected. As the needs of the public become a more clearly known, however, further and better services will be introduced.