Re: Queensland Railways [Was: etc. etc.]

[ianst@refer.to.sig.au (Ian Staples)]

In article <lrsq8ss8v166qimqih16g1ul8l54im6l5h@4ax.com>, 
rcook@pcug.org.au wrote:
>On Mon, 24 Jan 2000 08:14:01 GMT, ianst@refer.to.sig.au (Ian Staples)
>wrote:
>
>>I can't be sure how *easy* it was to go back and forth by train between 
>>Cairns and Brisbane in the 40s, but I *think* we managed it in '47 
>>without too much trouble (though I wasn't personally involved in the
>>bookings at that time :-).
>
>Bookings needed to be made a month in advance. It was a great source of
>pocket money (a quid) for me. Knowing people who wanted sleeper tickets
>in the peak periods, I would go to the Cairns station at 4pm and stay
>the night, giving my position up to the ticket buyer at 8am.
>
>Only once was I not first, (I was second) and one night the queue grew
>to 19 for tickets, but only the first 10 got what they wanted. Still
>have no idea of the basis for allocating tickets.

Yeah, a bit more is coming back to me with your prompting.  But, geez,
mate, if you were charging a quid for "pocket money" in the 40s it's a
wonder you're not in Spain now.  ;-)

It seemed to be that one way to get a sleeper if you couldn't book one
initially, was to buy one from the guard once you were on board.
My father seemed to accept this as a normal approach to ticketing
and one with a high level of certainty WRT a satisfactory outcome. :)

I don't know to what extent this was "pocket money" for the guard, or
whether it was an official way of doing things.  While on the surface
it may look a little sus, in actual fact one of the reasons for this
"flexibility", shall we say, may well have been the lack of central
booking services at that time.  This meant that Cairns, for example,
was only allocated a certain number of "through" seats/sleepers on the
Sunshine Express, and similarly for all other centres along the way.

Thus there would have been a fair bit of scope for the guard to shuffle
things round as the journey progressed, depending on how many passengers
were actually boarding at all the whistle stops en route.  It may have
been part of his duties to do this on behalf of QR -- but I rather suspect
it was more in the nature of a fringe benefit winked at by the system.
(Or is that suspicion a reflection of attitudes observed in corporate
affairs in more recent times?)

Cheers,  Ian S.

ianstDELETE@THISdpi.qld.gov.au