Cardboard shortage / Coloured card

Page last modified/checked: Friday, 4 October 2002
An industrial dispute within the Australian Paper Manufacturers industry led to a serious shortage of white cardboard; essential for the new zone tickets. It should also be recognised that concurrent with this sytem, the Victorian Railways had also introduced major changes to the issue of country tickets, for which white cardboard was also the basis. Ironically, this worked in favour of the suburban zone tickets as will be explained.

The problem was initially tackled in the latter months of 1981 when some stations co-operated by transferring ticket stocks to each other and then overstamping them with their station name. This practise was more easily done where one station supervised another.

Next, the printing works supplied tickets on white card, but with no station name (non-dedicated). These tickets were printed in lots of 100,000 and designated (A), (B) and (C). This stock was more easily exchanged between stations, but more importantly, the running numbers were not specific to any particular location.

The situation worsened and at the beginning of 1982, zone tickets started to appear on a variety of coloured card. This was left over stock from either country tickets, which were no longer colour specific, or suburban tickets that the zone system had itself replaced.

This chart summarises the uses of coloured card:

CARD STOCK COLOUR

BLUE
GREY
YELLOW
PINK
SALMON

FORMER TICKET USEAGE

Country Economy Down
Country Economy Up
Country First Down
Suburban Up single
Off Peak section tickets

ZONE TICKET USEAGE

Rail Single, Rail+Four
Rail+Four
Base colour for Travelcard, Off Peak Travelcard
Rail single, Rail weekly
Rail single, Rail weekly

The non-use of the brown (former First Class Up country card) was probably due to it being an unsuitable background upon which to print the coloured zone numbers.

The initial coloured card tickets were supplied as blanks (non-dedicated), again in lots of 100,000 and designated as (A), (B) and (C). Specific station issues were printed soon after. Coloured card stock continued to be issued right through until the end of the zone system!

.

Also noted during this entire period are some variations in format or errors in the use of card. This is probably as a result of being supplied by both the Government and Railway printers. The Government Printer always used "closed /negative" numerals (as shown on the two outer examples), whereas the Railway Printer always used "open/positive" numerals as shown on the centre example.


Note "TO"

Single on return card

Numerals facing inwards

Tram and bus issue daily Travelcards were also supplied to stations during the cardboard shortage, as this used example from Keon Park illustrates

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