Railroad Forums 

  • Interline Coupon Tickets?

  • Tell us where you were and what you saw!
Tell us where you were and what you saw!

Moderator: David Benton

 #308851  by Gilbert B Norman
 
Who else here remembers them?

Does this one look like the "topper"? It sure does to me.

http://imagescn.technomuses.ca/railways ... 6831&id=58

I do recall once my Mother showing me one she had for a Stamford-Ormond Beach FL round trip. That would have been ten coupons. My personal 'champ" was an eight coupon New York-Kapitichaun Club, PQ and return.

Obviously it is not possible to determine, but in the photo, I'll bet that lady is likely traveling Montreal-Florida and return.

Oh and guess what, your Pullman tickets were still separate coupons; one such for each accomodation.
 #309160  by GeorgeF
 
Gilbert B Norman wrote:Who else here remembers them?
Mr. Norman, I think that lady tops mine from 1970 or so. The B&O office in Washington, DC issued a ticket from DC to Prince Rupert and back, one way via the Northern Alberta Railway. I think the agent wept when we had to slip our trip by a week! But the B&O coupon got us an invite on the NAR to ride in the cab! We had to walk through the baggage car and along the catwalk on the Geep en route! Great memories!

 #309175  by NS VIA FAN
 
I think the only interline route now is the Maple Leaf as you would need a separate coupon for travel on the VIA portion from Niagara Falls to Toronto. The Adirondack and Cascades are Amtrak only trains and probably don’t need a separate coupon from the border to Montreal or Vancouver. (Will Amtrak sell you a through ticket from say, New York to Ottawa or must you get the Ottawa ticket from VIA in Montreal?)

Looking back at an old ticket receipt for International from back in 1985, the coupons read: Toronto-Sarnia, Sarnia-Port Huron (it was a VIA train through the tunnel) and Port Huron-Chicago.

And how times have changed. Last week to obtain my ticket from Ottawa to Toronto I just took my laptop printout (with barcode) to a ticket machine in the station, scanned it and got an actual ticket.

And the airlines have even removed a step. Returning to Halifax on WestJet later that evening, my laptop printout of my boarding pass was all I needed to get through security and onto the plane. Bypassed the ticket counter completely!

A lot of events have Print At Home Tickets now too (they just scan at the gate) so it probably won’t be long before your own printed at home ticked or boarding pass is sufficient for VIA too. Does Amtrak still require you to obtain an actual ticket or is the computer printout OK?

 #309183  by Gilbert B Norman
 
Even though any item on the railroad that is used to trasnsport "paperwork' is known as a pouch (or at least was "back in my day"), the term to "pouch'a ticket came from handling interline coupons. My experiences with such in Sleepers is thatboth the railroad and Pullman conductiors would make rounds together. The Pullman Conductor would lift the ticket for his accomodation while the railroad conductor would lift all coupons needed for the journey, place them in a small pouch, and give the passenger a receipt complete with his ticket punch for the lift. At each interchange, the pouches would be turned over to the next Conductor who would lift his road's coupon from the pouch. Presumably at journey's end, the pouch was empty and discarded.

The pouch was simply a courtesy afforded interline passengers. A passenger could choose to hold their transportation, i.e. ticket, through the journey, but that meant being wakened at, say, Richmond when traveling Northbound by the RF&P Conductor for a lift at maybe 2AM.

By the "mid-fifties", many East-West roads had adopted coupon books (I have plenty of those in my collection) that were roundly the same size as a personal check. Since they were carboned, they minimized preparation time at the ticket window, and certainly were more expedient to handle on board both by passenger and Conductor. As I recall though, the Southeast carriers still had coupons even past A-Day until Amtrak assumed ticketing and Revenue Accounting activities from the roads during 1972.