Edmondson railway ticket

[1] It is named after its inventor, Thomas Edmondson, a trained cabinet maker, who became a station master on the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway in England.

The Edmondson system came into general use with the creation of the Railway Clearing House in 1842, becoming "the essential standard feature".

The whole system, from printing to bulk storage to ticket racks, dating and issue, was based on these measurements.

The tickets to different destinations and of different types were stored in a lockable cupboard where the lowest remaining number of each issue was visible.

Vertical-format Edmondsons were validated in NCR21 cash registers, which is the machine printed date/fare/machine number on the ticket front.

The sum of some £500 was raised for Great Ormond Street Hospital as the result of the sale of last-day commemorative tickets.

In Sussex the Bluebell Railway has a number of Edmondson printing machines that are to be placed on display in a specially-built museum at the front of Sheffield Park station.

The reverse side of a ticket might be endorsed, "Subject to rules and regulations of the issuing railway company".

The Edmondson system was widely used in European countries such as Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, Romania, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy (until mid 1995), the Soviet Union, Norway, Poland, and Switzerland, and outside Europe, for example in Australia and Argentina.

In 1993 Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia and the state railway company ČSD was divided into České dráhy (ČD) and Železnice Slovenskej republiky (ŽSR).

In some local lines and lower-grade trains, Edmondson format was used even after the computerisation for a while before magnetic stripped card-shape tickets became in use.

On the Taiwan Railway Administration lines, tickets for local trains also keep the Edmondson format as in Japan.