Peter Masson wrote:

"Mizter T" wrote

I note your overall point. However in the example Bill gave, at the
time commuters would have had to buy a British Rail season ticket from
a BR ticket office, and buy a totally seperate Underground season
ticket from an Underground ticket office, there is thus a bit of a
disconnect.

How often people would have asked at a BR ticket office for a through
season ticket to Bank Underground station I don't know, but I guess it
may not have been that many, as intermodal ticketing simply wasn't on
the agenda at the time and commuters would, by and large, have been
aware of that.

On the contrary, through BR/LU season tickets have been available AIUI at
least since BR was nationalised. My father held a Chislehurst to South
Kensington (via Cannon Street or Charing Cross) season in the early 1950s,
and I held a Chislehurst to Reading General Priv Season, including travel on
the Bakerloo Line between Trafalgar Square and Paddington, in 1967. However,
in general if you travelled on ordinary tickets you had to rebook on the
tube. There were exceptions - in the early 1960s it was possible to get a
through ticket from Chislehurst to Whitechapel. I also remember in the late
1960s buying a day return Oxford to Chislehurst and the Oxford ticket office
also *selling* me a cross-London tube ticket (valid between tube stations
serving main line termini).

Peter


Argh - I've been caught out making inaccurate statements, I duly defer
to your superior wisdom Peter. The couple of people of an elder
pedigree with whom I've spoken to about pre-Capitalcard/Travelcard
season ticketing didn't mention this, eithert because they didn't
remember or more likely because they never needed such tickets as they
walked from the London terminal to their workplaces.

In that case pretty much everything I said in response to Steve Firth
is wrong! I guess the two reasons why commuters weren't advised that
there was a cheaper way was either (a) the ticket seller at Orpington,
for example, didn't know how close Cannon Street and Bank were, or (b)
they couldn't be bothered to communicate said information - which is
understandable in a way as the commuter asked for the ticket
specifically, and there may have been a monday-morning queue forming
behind said person all eager to just buy their ticket.

Peter, I've been intending to wrack the brains of someone such as you
so I could plot the history of such ticketing before the
Capitalcard/Travelcard. Have you any idea what area such BR/LU tickets
were available in - presumably from all London stations, but from
Haywards Heath, or even Brighton?

AIUI there was however a (somewhat bizarre) lack of intermodal
ticketing between London Transport buses and LU and/or BR, possibly
something to do with certain legal issues (and no I'm not getting
confused with the Bromley council legal challenge to Ken's Fairs Fair
policy in the early 80's) - am I right on this? Which begs the even
wider question as to what the situation was outside of London as to
whether there was any intermodal BR and local bus ticketing?