Snapshot of rail travel in a bygone era

Tickets Please, founded by Portadown man James Swan, offers framed versions of old train tickets along a number of routes in the province, including Carrickfergus.

The business was set up last year after James came across a cache of train tickets from the 1960s and 1970s at a car boot sale.

“The guy who sold the tickets to me was friendly with an old station master who had around 15,000 tickets in storage. The majority of the tickets he had were unused,” James said.

“I thought it was a real shame that these little pieces of history were just lying about. My granddad would have driven for Belfast City Centre trams. He was always showing me bit and pieces like his badges and tickets; I guess that stayed with me.”

Among the stock of tickets James bought are stubs for a range of destinations in the borough, including Whitehead, Greenisland, Downshire, and Carrickfergus itself.

Many were issued by the Ulster Transport Authority (UTA), a forerunner to Northern Ireland railways.

In the 1960s, a day excursion from Greenisland to any UTA station within a 15 mile radius cost one shilling and nine pence.

The stubs date back to the pre-decimalisation days, when all tickets were pre-printed on different coloured card to represent the different routes.

In 1971, with the advent of decimalisation, thousands of pre-printed tickets with ‘shillings and pence’ prices on them were taken out of circulation.

James continued: “Because the tickets are all the same size but different colours I thought, framed up professionally, they’d make a great gift. It’s a bit of local history that is dying out.

“Train tickets just come off a roll now and aren’t the sort of thing you’d hold on to for any longer than the journey you’re making. It’s a trip down memory lane to locations that will mean something to people.”

Of his special commissions, the 36-year-old added: “I put together a frame for someone whose granddad worked in Carrick but lived in Portadown. I was able to make up a frame of tickets of the journey he would have made every day from Portadown to Carrick.”

For more information on James’ business and to get in touch, go to www.facebook.com/ticketsplease2013 or call 07881954707.