Cymraeg ar gael isod!
The Narrow Gauge Railway Museum at Tywyn holds a considerable collection of Revd Wilbert Awdry memorabilia. In 2011, the one hundredth anniversary of his birth, an exhibition was being prepared to mark the event and a small loose leaf book was discovered 7′ x 4¼″ in size with dark green covers. On investigation it was found to have belonged to one R Evans and to contain a small collection of tickets.
There are a few nice tickets from 1939 to 41 when he was obviously working on the railway in the Chorlton cum Hardy area of Manchester.
What specially caught the eye were two tickets illustrated above. They are the standard Edmondson type, but apart from their age and their comparative rarity it is the curious impression imprinted on the tickets by the ticket dating press that is of interest. At first it was thought this must mean that the tickets were issued on 07 August for the 6.30 and 12.30 trains but an enquiry to David Jenner, Administration Manager and Company Archivist at the R&ER, produced these next two examples.
Images used by permission of the Ravenglass & Eskdale Archive
The final numbers 28.1 and 21.2 clearly dis-prove that theory. David suggested that the date is in the format YY MM DD. He had heard a suggestion that the final figures indicate the number of tickets sold for each train. That seems pretty unlikely as the type in the dating press would need to be altered by hand after the issue of each ticket, and the serial numbers of tickets are designed to give that information.
Such numbers have been seen at large stations where there were many dating presses in use and each point of sale was allocated an individual number but that is hardly likely on a small, rural railway. Our theory is that the numbers refer to either the number of the train in the Working Timetable or simply the number of the departure on the date of issue.
On that theory 3391 and 7393 were issued for the third departure from Ravenglass on 7 August 1907: 9661 for the second departure from the same place on 21 August 1907 and 7446 for the first departure from Boot on 28 September 1907.
