CURIOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY-TICKET MANUFACTURE.

In an article on 'Railway Tickets' in this Journal for September 23, 1876, it was stated that all the railway tickets for the whole world, except North America, are made in one establishment in the north of England. This statement we have since found requires correction, and in the correcting we gladly avail ourselves of an opportunity for noticing a celebrated factory in London, which by the courtesy of the proprietors, Messrs Waterlow and Sons (now a Company, 'Limited'), we are enabled to do.

Like many other great establishments, Messrs Waterlow's has grown from a small affair to gigantic proportions. Beginning with law-stationery, then advancing to account-book manufacture, then to various kinds of commercial printing, it has gone on step by step, until at present it gives employment to between three and four thousand persons. Where the several factories and commercial offices are situated would be hardly intelligible save to Londoners; suffice it to say that most of them are near Finsbury Square.

One of the factories, consisting of lofty buildings surrounding an open quadrangle, is devoted to ticket making and printing, chiefly railway tickets; and to the process as carried on there, we will now direct our readers' attention.

The cardboard for tickets is made of a slightly spongy texture, well fitted to take paste. It is known technically as 'middles,' and is the foundation for two external surfaces of paper, white or coloured as the case may be. The primitive paste-brush has long been discarded. A cleverly constructed machine pours out a stream of paste on two rollers, under or over which pass two sheets of paper, each of which becomes thoroughly pasted on one side. These are then quickly applied to the surfaces of the 'middle.' The paste-caldrons, in a compartment by themselves, have a vigorous appetite for flour, alum, and water, and pour forth volumes of steam. To shew what a 'bit of paste' may become when multiplied by millions, it will suffice to say that thirteen sacks of flour per week are used in this one factory! After the pasting, each sheet of cardboard, large enough for one hundred and twenty-five railway tickets, is, with others of the same kind, subjected to flat-pressure, rolling-pressure, and heat, until the surface-papers are firmly and smoothly attached to the 'middle;' exposure to a high temperature in heated chambers thoroughly dries them. Cutting-machines sever the sheets into single tickets, the well-known railway-ticket size, all precisely alike in dimensions.

Next comes the printing. Messrs Waterlow adopt four different commercial systems in the supply of these tickets. In the first system they manufacture the tickets throughout for the railway Companies, who issue them ready for use to the booking-clerks at the several stations. In the second, they partially print the tickets, leaving the Companies to finish them according to the varying exigences of the traffic. In the third, they sell the blank tickets, properly prepared and cut, to the Companies; the printing in this case being wholly carried on by the Companies. And in the fourth, they sell the machines to the Companies, with a license to use them. To specify the railway Companies that adopt one or other of these systems would be tedious detail. The principal machine is a beautiful contrivance invented and patented many years ago by Mr Lewthwaite, of Halifax, Yorkshire; and various improvements and new adaptations have been made in it from time to time by Messrs Waterlow.

A pile of about five hundred blank tickets is placed in an upright tube or hopper, with just room to sink down readily. The bottom of the tube is open, allowing the lowermost blank to rest upon a flat metal plate. A slider, with a rapid reciprocating horizontal motion, strikes the lowermost blank dexterously aside to a spot where it can be printed on the back with those cautions, instructions, and references to by-laws which most of the Companies deem proper to communicate to the public. Another sharp stroke drives the blank farther on, where the printing and numbering of the front or principal surface are effected. When the blank is printed on both surfaces it is struck onward again, and comes underneath an exit or delivery-tube, just the same height and dimensions as the hopper or feeding-tube. Up this it is driven by a series of jerks, until a pile of (say) five hundred is finished. In travelling horizontally from tube to tube, and vertically up the delivery-tube, each ticket acts as a kind of cardboard policeman, saying to its predecessor: 'Move on, if you please.' And they do move on, all undergoing some process or other at each stage of the movement. As the pile in one tube lessens, so does that in the other increase in height, like the two columns of liquid in a syphon. The whole pile can be removed from the delivery-tube at once by a dexterous hand; but woe betide the luckless wight who 'makes pie' (as the printers call the dropping and disordering of types in 'composing' or 'distributing'); for if a single ticket be disarranged, extra trouble is given in the after checking and correction.

As to the various colours displayed on railway tickets, some depend on the use of coloured sheets of paper in the first instance; some on the production of stripes of colour in a way bearing a resemblance to the making of coloured stripes on earthenware or stoneware in the pottery district; and some by a process more nearly resembling ordinary printing. One of the Companies adopts a particular diagonal red line on all tickets, distinguishing them from other tickets which have to pass through the railway clearing-house.

The automatic action of the machine or machines is very beautiful. For numbering each ticket, a peculiarly constructed wheel is used, which changes its particular digit every time a new blank is presented to it; and thus the consecutive numbers are produced on a series of tickets with unerring accuracy. A tell-tale index and a tell-tale bell, both automatically worked, give information as to the number of tickets printed, and the readiness of the machine to take in more food; but it is a matter of practical detail whether and when these tell-tales shall be deemed necessary. To give the reader an idea of how nicely this mechanism is adjusted, it refuses to work unless all the tickets are exactly of equal size, nicely squared, and in perfect order. It strikes one as being almost like a thing of life to see the machine detect a ticket from which a piece has purposely been torn off one end; its language is virtually, 'Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther,' for it prints as far as the defective ticket, and there stops.

As neither human fingers nor automatic machines are absolutely infallible, errors in numbering may occur in spite of all precautions. These are detected in a singular way. All the tickets in one series are made to pass through a machine with a velocity which the eye can scarcely follow. When stopped, the numbers are tested by two little index plates or wheels; if the same number is denoted on both indexes, all is well; but if any error has crept in, the index notifications differ, and afford means for determining at what part of the series the mishap has occurred.

A sheet of cardboard is certainly not a ponderous substance; but it is surprising how weighty the packages become when large quantities have to be dealt with. The tickets are tied up into small compact rows (string and tying being peculiar), and then packed into cubical masses in tin-lined boxes or cases—so firmly and closely pressed as to be as dense as a mass of wood. About fifty thousand tickets weigh one and a quarter hundredweight. The factory turns out two and a half millions of printed tickets (railway, steamboat, refreshment, &c.) per week, and ten millions of smoothly prepared but unprinted tickets; these numbers, multiplied by the fifty-two weeks in a year, give a total annual production of something like six hundred and fifty millions, weighing upwards of sixteen thousand hundredweight! If these tickets be taken at two inches in length, and if they were laid flat end to end, they would reach—— But we will leave our junior readers to exercise their arithmetical skill in solving this problem: merely hinting that it would require many voyages from England to America, and back again, to cover a distance equal to the length of this cardboard ribbon. From such small beginnings do great results ensue.