FROM MANX STEAM RAILWAY NEWS

ISSUE No. 123 - SPRING 1999

School Trains: in all articles and information about the school trains, I have not noticed any details of the arrangements made for paying for travel, apart from the mention by James I.C. Boyd in his volume three, that it was subsidised by the Education Authority.  Can anyone remember if special tickets were used and were they daily, weekly, termly and has anyone got any samples of them still?  It seems likely to me that special tickets may have been used as half fare tickets were not generally stocked on the Isle of Man Railway.  Half fare tickets were normally produced by the use of a special clipper which took a spoon-shaped piece of the lower part of the ticket.  This is the reason for the repetition of the stations in small type on most issues, and small cut-outs being returned to the audit office.  There were exceptions such as Forces, Workmen's and Rifle Club Members tickets for which there were probably no half fare available.

Agency Tickets: batches of tickets were also sent out for sale by agents such as the Steam Packet Co., Ltd., hotels and holiday camps - these often carried narrow overprinted lines but some were more specific.  5958 is green on the left and gray on the right with "Camp" overprinted in red, probably for Cunninghams Camp in Douglas.  The "PCHA" overprint in red on both tickets was for the Co-Operative Holiday Association establishment near Peel.  The single 3664 is on white and seems to indicate a walk out to Crsoby and back by train to Peel - this is in a style which was common in the 1950s although plain blue was the normal colour for ordinary third class singles.  6976 is a much earlier type, again in green and grey but lacking the repetition of the station names in small type and seems to be for a walk from Sulby Glen to Kirk Michael.

(Ed.:: the quality of the reproduction of the tickets referred to above in the magazine was very poor when it came to scanning for reproduction for inclusion on the website; however, internet auction sites such as www.ebay.co.uk often feature I.M.R. tickets and their many and varied types is well documented throughout the history books.  In the fullness of time we hope to include a "tickets" section on this site but as we are sure visitors will be aaware, this will be a mammoth task to set up and may well remain on the back-burner for some time!)