Historical Tram & Train Tickets

Tickets for the purists, however there is a bit of a story to these.

When it was known that the Railway was definitely being sold (to the Ellerton family) John Wilkins gave me permission to take some items from the railway as much for safe keeping as for anything else. These items included a selection of unissued ticket blocks - along with the Railways allocation details for these blocks.

All the tickets were produced by The Bell Punch Company and are in a variety of colours.

The earliest claims to be a block of "tram" tickets. Whether these are genuine tram tickets from the period 1899 - 1916 (when the Fairbourne tramway was converted to 15 inch gauge) is hard to be sure. They could have been bus tickets purchased by the railway at any time between 1916 and 1946. However, given that the FMR/FR rarely threw things away, its quite possible the block of tickets is from the 2ft tramway period.

Each block contains 500 tickets, sequentially numbered, held together by a steel staple. With the exception of the "tram" tickets all carry the Servis Washing Machines advert on the reverse side. The "tram" tickets have no printed reverse, thereby suggesting that they were printed pre 1940. All FMR/FR tickets issued during the Wilkins era carried the Servis advert - Servis products were made by Wilkins & Mitchell Ltd, the Wilkins family business.

A Brief History of Bell Punch
The Bell Punch Company, based in Uxbridge, was set up specifically in July 1878 in order to acquire the patent rights to an American hand-registering ticket punch that was being used by a number of British tramway companies.

By 1884 they had begun development of their own range of ticket printing machines. In 1891 they began supplying ticketing machines for London General Omnibus Company and from there, they expanded across the country supplying many tram, bus, some rail companies and other places that needed traceable, sequentially numbered tickets, like ferry boats.

Notably, they built the worlds first desktop electronic calculator, the Sumlock ANITA, however due to lack of management control and foresight, they were beaten to the marketplace by Sinclair Radionics. The Sumlock business was acquired by Rockwell International in 1973.

Following various buyouts, the Bell Punch Company ceased to trade in the 1980's.

Move your cursor/mouse over the photos and they will enlarge
each has a detailed caption

M 4000 Tram ticket, Adult Return 2s 6d - Bill Hyde Collection A 4100 Train One, Adult Single 4d - Bill Hyde Collection Za 4100 Train Two, Adult Single 4d - Bill Hyde Collection D 3200 Train One, Adult Single 1s 6d - Bill Hyde Collection C 4500 Train One, Adult Return 1s 3d - Bill Hyde Collection Cp 1100 Train One, Child Single 6d - Bill Hyde Collection L 5100 Train One, Child Single 7d - Bill Hyde Collection Zm 6100 Train One, Child Single 9d - Bill Hyde Collection E 6800 Train One, Child Return 10d - Bill Hyde Collection 3 E 1200 Train One, Child Return 10d - Bill Hyde Collection 2 Zd 8200 Train Two, Adult Single 1s 2 - Bill Hyde Collection ZP 3200 Train Two, Adult Return 1s 3d - Bill Hyde Collection Zf 8500 Train Two, Adult Return 1s 6d - Bill Hyde Collection Zk 9000 Train Two, Child Single 3d - Bill Hyde Collection Zl 6800 Train Two, Child Single 7d - Bill Hyde Collection train2childsing7d 2 Zm 3300 Train Two, Child Single 9d - Bill Hyde Collection Ze 4700 Train Two, Child Return 10d - Bill Hyde Collection Dp 1800 Party, Child Return 10d - Bill Hyde Collection

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