Edmonson tickets a lost "cause" for ever?

I keep all my tickets, they are displayed for my pleasure in my camper. The Edmundsons are permanently there, the paper ones tend to fall and get lost down .
Some lines actually give quite attractive paper tickets,the Swanage for instance always give me a lovely members ticket, but the effort is wasted, has to be card to have any impression on me.

 

I'm exactly the same with my pass! I had mine rejected at a railway once as well, at the time I wasn't totally sure it was on the list so didn't bother arguing, when I got home I checked and it was. :/

 

Especially if some people are using hole punchers rather than ticket clippers and you end up with with a massive hole in a not that large a ticket.

 

I could well be wrong about it being the SDR. I apologise to them if I am

 

I confess I do use a hole punch rather than "proper" clippers, purely because it has a clippings retainer in it and none of the more authentic ones I've found have one. Unless anyone can point me to one?

 

Not off-hand, the one I have just naturally retains them in the notch. The handles are also the right width to use in place of a T-key.
Another pair I have actually have a proper carriage key end but the punch bit is rather worn so I don't use them.

 

Let's be honest, I suspect @paulhitch just likes a good argument and disagreeing with people.

Nobody is suggesting that Edmonson tickets are all that matters to passengers by a long chalk, but that they form an important part of the overall experience - and experience built of many elements, a number of which he takes delight in lecturing us lesser, non IoWSR types about, all of which add to the overall experience. Clean carriages, good toilets, dec

I am sorry I keep having to repeat it but EPOS systems cost a lot more than Edmonson (most people buy in tickets rather than having their own machines), have on-going costs (bespoke reports are extra BTW) and are far from easy to use, nor reliable in their results (double bookings anyone!)

Yet again, please explain how they are worth the considerable sums that many railways have spent on them to this ancient dinosaur!

Steven

 

Again, you are distorting (perhaps more misunderstanding) what was said. My point is that there are more important things than tickets to worry about. I am not in the least surprised about what you say concerning coach parties. They tend, not exclusively of course, to be of an age group who remember pasteboard. I can hardly remember the things in use on "real" railways myself. As for children they would not not see anything amiss in something the size of a £5 note and made of plastic. (No, I am not advocating that.)

PH

 

Somewhere in the attic I have a (G)WR ticket punch which embosses a code on the ticket

 

I agree it's not the most important thing, but it's hardly a difficult thing to get right. We've been wittering along for so long now I've forgotten, what do you advocate instead then and why?

 

Because PH invariably gets into a hole and then keeps digging deeper rather than shut up or, shock, horror, admit he is wrong.

 

It's been a while since you had anything to do with kids is it? Little sponges their minds are! Tell them that what they are holding is what was used in the olden days and that will mean something. My own children always come home positively buzzing after the yearly school excursion to the local museum. Are not the little extra touches not worth the effort, rather than leaving a (soul less) void that you believe will not be missed? Drawing the line at the extreme end, then you might as well catch a bus to the next village and back and call it good.

As for cleanliness, I doubt anyone is disagreeing that it is not important, but the line of reasoning you seem to be implying is that in this particular case, Edmonson tickets and cleanliness can somehow be be mutually exclusive. I could actually draw a line of logic to say the opposite but that would be pure conjecture. Unless you can prove such a correlation exists then perhaps you could confine your cleanliness gripes to an appropriate thread where perhaps a more constructive light can be thrown on the subject?

 

I would never be so cruel as to call you a dinosaur Steven! My point of view is that tourist railways are in full competition with other leisure attractions and this will get worse. At the same time they will get more expensive to run. Thus they will have to offer discount sales in advance to get one over the competition. Most of the day to day revenue does not come from gricers.

I am beginning to hear comments (I won't say about where) such as "grubby and threadbare" or "they seem to clean the carriages once a month". I have been to a place myself where the platforms were gritty with smokebox char. These are matters which are more deserving of attention than the de minimis issue of the size and material of the tickets.

Paul

 

So all topics should be off limits until those which you believe are worthy have been resolved to your satisfaction?

Give it a rest.

 

I'm wondering if this is some sort of defence mechanism, Paul knows he's talking rubbish so he tries to change the subject onto something we all agree on; namely that clean carriages are of the utmost importance. Once again Paul, just because some things are less deserving of attention than others, doesn't mean those matters of less importance should be discarded. What would your "default" be then, if you don't think railways should be spending any time or money worrying about Edmondson tickets?

 

Whatever is most readily compatible with card payments, online booking and Gift Aid donations, It might well be a system from the eighteen forties but I think it would be unlikely.

PH

 

A supermarket receipt then?

 

Well I am somewhat late coming to this thread........

In the heritage railway movement what we sell is an experience. The locomotives, carriages, signals, stations, food, drinks, smells, sounds and also tickets are all parts of this experience. My personal view is that using proper Edmondson tickets is part of delivering the heritage experience that we all try to deliver.

It is a source of ongoing disappointment to me that the railway that I support most, the IWSR, stopped using these tickets when EPOS was introduced. It has never been adequately explained to me why the EPOS receipt and Edmondson travel tickets cannot co-exist. After all if you pay with a card at many National Rail stations you get a till roll type payment receipt and separate (thin) card tickets. Hopefully we'll get there but this is unlikely to be in the near future.

 

Thought I'd try and make this a bit more relatable Paul, seeing as we're not really seeing eye to eye; Imagine some railways started putting these up in station waiting rooms:



You'd quite rightly cry foul that they are in no way heritage and detract from the overall experience, even if it's only a small detail. If I then came along and apologised for the inauthenticity, but explained that the railway deemed it more important for the coaches to be clean, would you be satisfied, and think "oh, fair enough"?

 

AHHH! That explains everything! Edmondson tickets have been dispensed with on the Isle of Wight, therefore they are unnecessary and a waste of money everywhere else.