Another change which may also have occurred concurrently was the permanent removal of the price from rail only and travelcard weekly tickets which then enabled this stock to remain as a running issue, rather than being replaced at every fare rise. If this change also attracted Oppostion ire, these reasons of economy in ticket printing and supply could be justified.
The fine tuning of information on the front of neighbourhood and travelcard tickets continued to evolve. At some point during 1986 the word "Concession" was printed on the front of these tickets to emphasise that the ticket had been sold at a concession fare and was available for use only to those who were legally entitled to such a fare. Also by this time the fare had been repositioned from the bottom right hand corner to being parallel with the left hand edge. This was more suitable to ticket selling staff, as the travelcard series tickets had been designed to sit vertically in ticket tubes where the price could be partially obscured.
The example shown here is the earliest we have reflecting both of these changes.
The July 1987 fare rise disrupted the pattern of twenty-eight day accounting periods. Fare rises always take effect on a Sunday and the first opportunity to do so within the new financial year was Sunday the 5th July. This date was only two weeks past the end of the previous accounting period and as such, a special print of neighbourhood, off peak saver and travelcard tickets had to be provided covering the two week period. This can clearly be seen with the three ticket samples shown below. This unusual occurrence was a result of an apparent urgency to implement a fare rise at the earliest possible opportunity. The fare guide and travel brochure that was printed in conjunction with this fare rise gives no specific date, merely stating July 1987. This indicates that there may have been some uncertainty as to the exact timing of this fare rise for some months prior, even though it had been announced in the media in late May.
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