In the days of the 'Big Four' railway companies, could you buy a
ticket from anywhere to anywhere or were tickets specific to one
company? Would there be a discount for 'LMS trains only'?

How was the revenue allocated? Was it much the same as it is now -
except there would be no computers?

On 14/12/2023 14:11, Scott wrote:
> In the days of the 'Big Four' railway companies, could you buy a
> ticket from anywhere to anywhere or were tickets specific to one
> company? Would there be a discount for 'LMS trains only'?
>
> How was the revenue allocated? Was it much the same as it is now -
> except there would be no computers?

Most fares would have been company-specific, but you could usually
obtain tickets from your local station to a station served by a
different company; in some cases, there may have been inter-company
agreements to permit outward & return journeys by different companies,
but I don't think that was a universal policy.

Cannot answer all the questions, but the Railway Clearing House
distributed income between different railway companies. The amount was
presumably related to the relative proportions of mileage on each railway.

Almost all fares were mileage based).

(And it was once policy to collect used tickets at the end of journeys,
and then for (manual) "auditing" of those tickets - which must have been
a very tedious occupation.)

On 14/12/2023 14:11, Scott wrote:
> In the days of the 'Big Four' railway companies, could you buy a
> ticket from anywhere to anywhere or were tickets specific to one
> company? Would there be a discount for 'LMS trains only'?
>
> How was the revenue allocated? Was it much the same as it is now -
> except there would be no computers?

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_Clearing_House

--
Graeme Wall
This account not read.

On Thu, 14 Dec 2023 14:11:02 +0000, Scott
<newsgroups@gefion.myzen.co.uk> wrote:

>In the days of the 'Big Four' railway companies, could you buy a
>ticket from anywhere to anywhere or were tickets specific to one
>company? Would there be a discount for 'LMS trains only'?
>
>How was the revenue allocated? Was it much the same as it is now -
>except there would be no computers?
>
Generally speaking, you would not have had different companies sharing
significant lengths of route, it would have been "company specific" in
the sense of using that company's termini and line between two towns
although some had agreements to accept each others' tickets without
penalty to the passenger. Some of those agreements live on e.g. (now
hidden within the Oyster system) in the form of permitting either
NR/LU travel between two points or changing between them at an
intermediate point (converted into Out of Station Interchanges such as
e.g. Kenton and Northwick Park or the two Harrow main station).

On 14/12/2023 18:57, Charles Ellson wrote:
> On Thu, 14 Dec 2023 14:11:02 +0000, Scott
> <newsgroups@gefion.myzen.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> In the days of the 'Big Four' railway companies, could you buy a
>> ticket from anywhere to anywhere or were tickets specific to one
>> company? Would there be a discount for 'LMS trains only'?
>>
>> How was the revenue allocated? Was it much the same as it is now -
>> except there would be no computers?
>>
> Generally speaking, you would not have had different companies sharing
> significant lengths of route, it would have been "company specific" in
> the sense of using that company's termini and line between two towns
> although some had agreements to accept each others' tickets without
> penalty to the passenger. Some of those agreements live on e.g. (now
> hidden within the Oyster system) in the form of permitting either
> NR/LU travel between two points or changing between them at an
> intermediate point (converted into Out of Station Interchanges such as
> e.g. Kenton and Northwick Park or the two Harrow main station).

There were exceptions such as the express latterly known as Pines
Express. It ran over LSWR, Somerset and Dorset, Midland and LNWR tracks
(possibly more?). Train started running in 1910 but was only named after
grouping.

--
Colin