National Express coach ticket (R2605653) - Dec 2001

Until the dawn of on-line booking for coach journeys coach operators like National Express, Premier Travel, Yelloway etc had one or maybe more booking agents in just about every town.

Such agents included bus station offices and travel agencies but there were hundreds of small businesses where tickets could be booked. Newsagents were perhaps amongst the most numerous.

The agent held stocks of official tickets and would write out a ticket for the passenger who would pay the appropriate fare. Depending on the system employed the agent might in the first instance have to make a phone call the coach operator’s office or Chart Room to ascertain if seats were available otherwise a confirmation copy would be sent to the operator. As technology advance the agent would tap into the computer based reservation system to obtain seat allocations and booking reference numbers.

Ticket sets usually comprised a Confirmation copy, an Outward journey ticket, a return journey ticket and an accounting copy. Carbon paper was inserted between each of the sheets. Handling carbon paper was often a messy business with fingertips getting black in the process. In time the tickets had a coating of carbon which removed the need for the separate carbon paper sheets although fingertips still got dirty.

National Express moved on to use airline style tickets within individual folders. The cover and outward journey ticket are shown here. (The ticket is the actual outward journey ticket which I never used).
The cover shows the names of the different brands used by National Express at the time.