GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton

GWR Route: North Warwickshire Line

Birmingham Snow Hill: gwrbsh2684

View of Snow Hill station's High Level Booking Office with Norman on multiprinter in 1963. In the base of the machine were over a thousand printing plates. The clerk would swing the printing head over the plates from side to side and from front to back, and when he'd aligned the cursor with the required station/ticket type on the illuminated screen the head should then have been above the required plate. He would then insert the relevant coloured blank ticket into the printing head. The head would then lift the plate out of the base and print the ticket. At the same time, by means of a set of pegs on the plate the price of the ticket would be automatically added (in old pence) to the machines tally. I'm sure the clerk at TM could have issued a ticket to Stalybridge if he had tried even if it was not on the machine and had meant writing out a blank card! The machines were certainly much slower in issuing tickets than the old method, but booking up at the end of each shift was very much easier and quicker.

Bill Wright

back