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| There are two information sources that helped to explain the different types of ESR ticket vending machines, barrier gates and the booking office ticket encoding and issuing equipment. The most detailed source was the November 1977 issue of the former Railways of Australia "NETWORK" magazine. NETWORK provided an industry overview whilst also being available to the broader public. The second source of information is based on our own observations of the ESR ticketing as it stood in January 1989. |
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Eight booking office machines were supplied. These were installed in the booking offices at each of the four ESR stations. Another was installed at the ESR window on the concourse at Town Hall. One was also installed a little later as part of the modernization of the Chalmers Street booking office at Central station which was in the vicinity of the concourse above the ESR platforms. It is likely that there were two machines at Bondi Junction and Martin Place as these were the busiest ESR stations. This would account for all eight machines.
The booking office machine consisted of two components. To the right of the booking clerk was the entry keypad with the station number panel fixed on top. This panel had 8 columns comprising nearly 300 station names (including via Bridge and via Epping) covering the Sydney Suburban and Outer Metropolitan areas as the fare structure existed in 1979. This meant that magnetic strip tickets could be issued to stations as far out as Kiama, Yerrinbool, Medlow Bath and Wyee. The first eight names at the top of the first column covered the flat fare to the City Circle stations which included Kings Cross. The next two stations were Edgecliff and Bondi Junction. After this the station names were arranged alphabetically, the first name in each group having an enlarged capital letter. The push buttons below are less easy to distinguish because of numerous changes over the years but a great many sequences can still be established. The rows are arranged as: Concession, Daily, Period, From, To, Special, Bus, Cancel. It appears the default status of the machine is "Adult Single". The concession row probably included Minifare (later Off Peak). The Daily button was used for a return ticket. The four periodical buttons were weekly, quarterly, yearly and rail/bus. Only the weekly was available as a magnetic strip ticket by January 1989. The from row may have allowed the issue of extension tickets - the first button being from City stations and the second from other points. It is not clear why there are four buttons on the "To" row, but the last two are labelled for a specific fare type - Manly Ferry? The use of "Special" is unknown. The Bus row would originally have been single, double trip, 12 trip (later 10 trip) and weekly. The last button is the self-explanatory "Cancel". The destination station code was entered using the numerical keypad on the right. A progressive digital readout was dislayed above. The issue button is hidden under the ticket taped to the fascia. |
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The last piece of equipment was the wall mounted TICKET MACHINE MONITOR PANEL. This appears to have been designed to oversee up to 7 ticket vending machines, three lights are illuminated here which would match the number of ticket vending machines still active at Martin Place at this time. The monitor would have alerted staff to such things as low change and ticket stock and possibly a jammed coin slot. The Edmondson dating press was fixed to the counter and each ESR booking office had a portable cabinet with a full supply of Edmondson ticket stock for use in the event of BOM failure or total power failure (and this has happened). There were other fare types for which there was lesser demand such as dayRover, combined Rail and Manly ferry, Taronga Zoo and Bicycle tickets. These were all held as Edmondson tickets in the cabinet along with tickets to locations for which there was sufficient demand beyond the greater Sydney area. This included the Newcastle suburban area and numerous country stations. There are two hand daters, the red handled one was the weekly numeral which had to be applied to ESR magnetic strip tickets. The smaller dater was a backup to the Edmondson dating press. In the top left hand corner is a distance based fare chart effective 3rd July 1988. Of interest is a glimpse of what is likely a supplemental list of station names and their three letter codes due to the extension of the outer Metropolitan fare zone beyond the original 1979 boundaries. This allowed magnetic strip tickets to be issued to stations beyond the limits for which the BOM's were originally set up. |
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To the left of the booking clerk was a cabinet whose purpose was to store, retrieve, encode, print and eject the desired ticket down the chute to the window ledge. The tickets with the greatest demand were stacked in vertical tubes inside the machine. By the time of this photograph in January 1989, this comprised Rail-only, Rail/Bus single and Rail Weekly cards. The tubes on top of the cabinet would originally have held dedicated magnetic ticket stock for the lesser used fare types such as rail quarterly and yearly and bus/rail periodicals. These were fed into the slot visible at the left hand side of the cabinet. This method of storage and retreival shows that the ESR magnetic ticket stock was all supplied pre-cut. The tickets were supplied by Sydney company Unistat and their boxes are visible here branded as Unitickets. Note the "Made in Australia" logo on the box ends. Unistat originally produced a large range of cardboard based stationary and office supplies among other products. |