This is the first of a planned series of studies of the tickets and fares from the various tramways in Kent. It identifies the tickets which are known or thought to have been issued by the Dover Corporation Tramway between 1897 and 1935 and sets them in context.

The electric-powered Dover Tramway was the second of its type ever built in Britain and so occupies a position of importance in transport history, as it led the way for the introduction of tramways by other small municipalities throughout Britain. This book draws upon the official minutes, local newspapers and the surviving tickets from a number of important collections to provide an unrivalled record of the changes in the system of tickets and fares during its years of operation.

If you would like to order this book, it is available at an introductory price of £16.00 (including postage and packing) until the 29 February 2008. After this date the price will be £20.00 (including postage and packing).

Send your order to: Solo Publications, 80 The Street, Kingston, Canterbury, Kent, CT4 6JQ, UK. Please make cheques payable to ‘SP Elks’.

Several years ago I was visiting the “Watercress” line i.e. the Mid Hants. I booked my ticket at Waterloo asking for a “Day Return to Alton” and showing my network card. As I only had a few minutes until the train left I hurried to the platform.

I then discovered that I had been issued with a day return to Walton on Thames! However, it was too late to return to the booking office so I made the journey. Fortunately, I did not have my ticket checked on the outward journey. On the return journey the booking office at Alton was closed so I had to travel back with the erroneous ticket. The return journey was also completed without any checks being made.

Recently a casual chat with reader Mr. Brian Matthews has inspired a brief look at this interesting subject. In the 1930’s presumably the marketing department of the London Midland & Scottish Railway (L.M. & S.R.) invited private firms to promote their wares and facilities in the form of “insert” advertisements which would be located within Edmondsons printed by the L.M. & S.R. This certainly involved a separate procedure by the printers as the “insert” had to be inserted during the production process between the front and back portions of a ticket.

It is not known how much was charged by the railway, however, if it was a modest amount a break-even situation would have been quite challenging. How many different advertisements are there? In the best part of 20 years trading, only around 30 different advertisements have been seen by us. These have been found in tickets issued during the 1930’s through to the 1960’s, plus audit tickets. They have been seen in various ticket types ranging from the normal single through to dog tickets and platform tickets. The only logical advert has been “Spratt’s” dog food which can be found in dog tickets. Apart from that the advertisements could appear covering any journey on the system, with some of the journeys not being very popular, hence the number of tickets still on issue in the 1950’s and 1960’s. This suggests that the advertisers faced mixed fortunes of failure and success regarding user response. In theory the user was to remove the “insert” and retain it. There could have been “inserts” on certain local tickets, e.g. within the Glasgow area promoting a certain brand of whisky and just related to one print run over a short time period. Therefore, the probability of seeing one of these tickets nowadays is very low and as a result much speculation is involved as to how widespread the use of this marketing tool was.

There was an insert self advertisement for the L.M.& S.R. offering its transport services, as illustrated, both sides of course with its different texts. Two other illustrations are offered with the aim that readers can come forward with more information regarding this hitherto largely unreported subject, which we are sure will be of interest to most of you.

The names of stations are an obviously fascinating subject with no end of curiosities. Did you know, for example, that there are at least fifteen “Suttons”, ten “Newports” and nine “Waltons”?

These include variations in the titles, e.g. Sutton and Sutton Coldfield, Newport (South Wales) and Newport Pagnell. More unusual names occurring three times each include Bramley, Overton and Waterfall, whilst there are at least twenty three names occurring twice, e.g. Moira and Kimberley, which incidentally are female first names. It is interesting to note that these names do not occur in the same town but in different towns, often far apart, e.g. Barry in South Wales and Barry in Tayside. Some names are frankly odd. The North of England boasts Swine, Low Row, Mumps, Triangle, Crank, Rookery, Idle, Mow Cop and even Talk o’ th’ Hill! The Great Western boasted examples such as Bugle, Blue Anchor and Shepherds. Scottish examples include Highlandman, Crook of Devon King Edward and Gatehouse of Fleet. Nigg and Rigg could be potentially confusing; perhaps it is just as well that they are both long closed. Ireland has examples such as Oola, Nobber, Pluck and Horse and Jockey. How about the two occurrences of Pant in rural Shropshire and the other example not too far away in South Wales, which has reopened as part of the Brecon Mountain Railway?

The speciality of numerically named stations provide even more thought on this subject, e.g. Three Counties, Five Mile House or the straight forward Twenty which was located on the Midland & Great Northern railway system. The railway companies did not engage in flippant naming of stations, after all it was a serious business opening new stations with the aim of attracting as many passengers as possible to begin to recoup some of the expenditure of construction. Therefore, the station names reflected the name of the local environs which in many cases can easily be detected on Ordnance Survey maps. However, some names were a trifle inaccurate in the sense that the actual towns which some stations purported to serve were in fact some distance away from the station, in many cases miles were involved.

This information was gleaned from an article by H.L. Hopwood in the December 1917 edition of the Railway Magazine, pages 391-394. Hopefully Mr. Hopwood has stimulated us. If any reader has some anecdotes they would like to share with us all regarding this subject, then we look forward to hearing from you.