Sublime in its awefulness

If you open  (successfully) http://www.librarything.com/catalog/RobertForsythe&deepsearch=Transport+Ticket+Society you will find an analysis of the 12 Transport Ticket Society books that I have. This might seem unaccountably boring but it is anything but. This morning a large white envelope came through the door. I have been a member of the TTS for years but this does not mean my finger is on the pulse of everything and in publishing their occasional books the TTS timeline can be fluid. What has just been achieved is the publication of the 2008 and 2010 presidential addresses. The latter by Matthew Davis is a very useful guide to contemporary credit card sized tickets used on the national British network.

The other that fell out of the envelope prompts my post title "Sublime in its awefulness". They say of war that it is an awful lot of frightened boredom and a few minutes or hours of active hell. In most wars, most of a population do their best to carry on. This naturally includes transport systems and Marco Moerland in his 2008 presidential address made it his task in 74 pages to look at the impact Hitlerism made on transport tickets. Wow. What a poignant and staggering result as step by step these little pieces of paper chart civilisation's disintegration and recovery. There is a definite political edge to the presentation with the author's view and therefore treatment that World War Two lasted from November 1918 to October 1989. I learnt that the Warsaw ghetto ran its own tramline, that Rotterdam had Nazi styled tram police and there are many examples showing the territorial aggrandisement of the Reich. A Stuttgart tramway map ticket is turned over to become a bullying piece of propaganda. Russian towns started having to issue German language tickets. Pen portraits of key personnel in the abuse and their transport impact are given.The impact of the chaos is shown even in Britain and in the immediate post war recovery and division of Europe. Many of the arrangements were quint-essentially ephemeral. The TTS is an organisation dedicated to ephemera and here in this volume is an apex of that dedication.

Guilty Tickets by Marco Moerland is published by The Transport Ticket Society. ISBN 978-0-903209-76-2. Priced £14.95 or 18 Euro.

Thomas Edmondson Tickets

For about 150 years, the sine qua non of railway and much shipping ticketing was this little pasteboard card called the Edmondson ticket. It was invented further along the Newcastle Carlisle line beside which I live. Now to showcase my own considerable collection, to advertise the related work of the Transport Ticket Society of which I am a member, to enable others to post their examples and discuss the subject and to provide links to tickets offered for sale I have opened this Facebook Community Page Thomas Edmondson Tickets. It features albums. Individuals wishing their own album space can approach me and this can be created. There is also a resource album leading you to books and other online resources about these tickets. If you can you are invited to Like the Facebook page. In the first 36 hours 25 people did so.

Transport, tickets and specialist collecting magazines.

Specialist Auctions works brilliantly for all sorts of niche subjects. In turn many of these subjects have specialist organisations furthering their interests. Where possible it is nice to create a relationship between the auction site and an interested organisation. Here is an example of how this can be done. The Transport Ticket Society (see http://www.transport-ticket.org.uk/) was established in 1946. Their journal is one of the most august of these types in literature in the transport heritage field and there are many such. In Number 546 for July 2009, your author and Specialist Auctions moderator has managed to place a page of copy which also deploys the "model bus" advert generated earlier this year.Hopefully this will bring new folk to list at Specialist Auctions and they will also take advantage of the quite wide spread of ticket material already listed.There are two obvious categories to check at Specialist Auctions and these are:http://www.specialistauctions.com/categories.php?parent=5045

for the rail tickets

http://www.specialistauctions.com/categories.php?parent=10807

for the bus tickets.Other tickets can be found at Specialist Auctions including aviation and sporting examples. Mentioning the area of of specialist collecting journals, a little searching of the site revealed that some good examples of these are also being listed. For instance from the Huddersfield Canal Society http://www.specialistauctions.com/auctionsearch.php?posted=1&keywords=Huddersfield%20canal&category=0 . An especially rare title which was being offered as I typed was a group of 19 Corgi Club Magazines from the early 1960s. This is the diecast car sort of Corgi not the woof-woof. See them at http://www.specialistauctions.com/auctionsearch.php?posted=1&keywords=corgi%20club%20magazine&category=0. I offer a number of onboard magazines from railway operators past and present like http://www.specialistauctions.com/auctiondetails.php?id=1261736 . Specialist magazines do not just cover transport collectables. There are many in the Specialist site for the craftworking theme like http://www.specialistauctions.com/auctiondetails.php?id=1365214 .