Edmondson Railway Ticket - Use in Other Countries

Use in Other Countries

The Edmondson system was widely used in European countries such as Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, or Switzerland, and outside Europe, for example in Australia and Argentina. The use of Edmondson tickets ceased in most countries in the 1980s or 1990s.

In Switzerland, Edmondson tickets were issued until December 2007 at some stations, especially of the RhB. Edmondson tickets are still printed and distributed (also via internet order) by Druckerei Aeschbacher in Worb (Bern/Switzerland).

While they are no longer used on main-line railways in Australia, Edmondson tickets are still issued by many heritage and tourist railways; the Puffing Billy Railway prints its own Edmondson tickets, having five ticket printing machines including a working Edmondson original. It prints tickets for most of the preserved or heritage railways in Australia, as well as exporting tickets to the Talyllyn Railway.

In Czechoslovakia there were two printing houses that printed Edmondson tickets, the first at Prague from 1898 until 1999, the second at Vrútky, both part of the state transportation publishing house NADAS, since privatized as NADAS AFGH s. r. o. (Ltd.). In 1993 Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia and the state railway company ČSD was divided into České dráhy (ČD) and Železnice Slovenskej republiky (ŽSR). The Prague printing house produced 50,000 tickets per day until start of decrement. Since 1999 ČD stopped ordering these tickets and production stopped. In 1999, the new private narrow-gauge railway company Jindřichohradecké místní dráhy (JHMD, Local Railways of Jindřichův Hradec surroundings) bought the machine accessories from Prague and since 2000 it has run its own printing house at Kamenice nad Lipou, for its own use and for nostalgic trips on ČD and a number of museum railways. JHMD has one of two extant Goebl printing machines from 1895 in the world, together with four newer machines. In the eighties, at ten of the biggest railway stations in Czechoslovakia special mechanical printing machines were used, which printed tickets in Edmondson's format.

Edmondson tickets are used by heritage railways in India like the Nilgiri Mountain Railway. They are still used in Paraguay by the Ferrocarril Presidente Don Carlos Antonio Lopez, now Ferrocarriles del Paraguay SA (2011).

The government-owned Sri Lanka Railways uses second-hand machines purchased from the Netherlands to print their tickets.

In Japan most local railway tickets keep the Edmondson format. These are modern magnetic back tickets issued by vending machines, punched by automatic station entry gates and collected at the exit gates. In some rural stations hand-punching by railway employees is still done.

On the Taiwan Railway Administration lines, tickets for local trains also keep the Edmondson format as in Japan. Reserved tickets on the Tzu-Chiang express and high speed rail tickets have a larger format. Some tourist lines (e.g. Pingsi Line) still use Edmonson tickets.