Vintage Bus and Train Tickets

Reference code: HOYFM.ACL2025.70
Level of description: Fonds
Title: Vintage Bus and Train Tickets
Scope and content: This extensive archive comprises bus, railway, and tram tickets for predominantly Irish transport companies, many of which were collected by Richard Whitford, a NIR relief signalman and ticket inspector from Bangor. These are arranged in photograph albums for the following railways: Belfast & County Down Railway (also pasted into scrapbook titled Newtownards), County Donegal Railways Joint Committee, Great Northern Railway (Ireland), Great Southern Railways/Coras Iompair Eireann, Iarnrod Eireann, London, Midland and Scottish Railway/Northern Counties Committee, Northern Ireland Railways, Sligo, Leitrim and Northern Counties and narrow gauge including Castlederg and Victoria Tramway, Cavan and Leitrim Railway, Clogher Valley Railway, Giants Causeway Portrush and Bush Valley (Bushmills) Railway and Londonderry and Lough Swilly.
Bus companies include Ulsterbus and many independents such as McGivern’s, Montgomery’s, Patterson’s Motor Service, Martin’s, Edgar’s, Pentland Coaches, Lough Swilly and the Belfast Omnibus Company.
Tramways include Belfast City (Corporation) and Glengormley. One scrapbook donated by Arthur Campbell contains tramway tickets for major English cities, also, India, Belgium, Paris, Canada, Australia, as well as independent Irish bus companies including Spence's, Courtney's, Tower, W. Jellie, Crother's & Dugan's, Holywood Pioneer, Defiance, McKee's, and Imperial for the 1920s.
Besides tickets these albums contain a variety of items including handbills, luggage labels, timetables, share certificates, buttons, membership cards, pocket rule and regulation books, labels, various notices, commemorative tokens, enamel badges, check tokens, business cards, menus, and miscellaneous items produced by London transport and the Railway Preservation Society of Ireland. Details on individual items within the albums can be found via the Objects search facility.
The archive also contains loose tickets in an archival box for all of the above, as well as additional items, including Citybus, British Rail, foreign, air, and sea tickets.