APTIS was the Accountancy and Passenger Ticket Issuing System used on the British Rail/National Rail network until 2007. It was originally called "Advanced Passenger Ticket Issuing System" as it was being developed at the time of the

Advanced Passenger Train The Advanced Passenger Train (APT) was a tilting high speed train developed by British Rail during the 1970s and early 1980s, for use on the West Coast Main Line (WCML). The WCML contains many curves, and the APT pioneered the concept of active ...

. It was widely known as the All-Purpose Ticket-Issuing System, a description which was used during the development of the prototype devices. Ford, Roger (1984). "Technology Update: Ticket issuing and revenue control". In: ''

Modern Railways ''Modern Railways'' is a monthly British magazine covering the rail transport industry, which was published by Ian Allan until March 2012 and Key Publishing since then. It has been published since 1962. The magazine was based originally in Shep ...

'', Volume 41, May 1984, Pages 256-257.Glover, John (1985). "Mechanisation of ticket issuing". In: ''

'', Volume 42, April 1985, Pages 192-195. It led to the introduction, on the national railway, of a new standardised machine-printable ticket, the APTIS ticket, which replaced the

Edmondson railway ticket The Edmondson railway ticket was a system for recording the payment of railway fares and accounting for the revenue raised, introduced in the 1840s.Farr, M (1997). "Edmondson, Thomas". In: Simmonds and Biddle (1997), Page 141 It is named after ...

first introduced in the 1840s.

Overview

APTIS issued impact printed tickets on credit-card sized card ticket stock, with a

magnetic stripe The term digital card can refer to a physical item, such as a memory card on a camera, or, increasingly since 2017, to the digital content hosted as a virtual card or cloud card, as a digital virtual representation of a physical card. They shar ...

on the centre of the reverse which could be encoded to operate ticket barriers; it could also use plain non-magnetic ticket stock. APTIS could issue receipts for passengers paying by

debit card A debit card, also known as a check card or bank card, is a payment card that can be used in place of cash to make purchases. The card usually consists of the bank's name, a card number, the cardholder's name, and an expiration date, on either ...

or credit card. These receipts were a combination of a transparent

carbonless copy paper Carbonless copy paper (CCP), also known as non-carbon copy paper or NCR paper ('no carbon required'—a backronym derived from its creator, National Cash Register), is a type of coated paper designed to transfer information written on the top shee ...

top copy, for the customer; and a backing card, for retention by British Rail. The customer signed the receipt, handed it back; and, in return, was given the signed top copy and the train tickets.

Adoption by British Rail

APTIS was derived from a private venture ticketing system, the General Purpose ticket-issuing system, developed by

Thorn EMI Thorn EMI was a major British company involved in consumer electronics, music, defence and retail. Created when Thorn Electrical Industries merged with EMI in October 1979, it was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was once a constituen ...

in 1978. It had 25 kB of memory.

British Rail British Railways (BR), which from 1965 traded as British Rail, was a state-owned company that operated most rail transport in Great Britain from 1948 to 1997. Originally a trading brand of the Railway Executive of the British Transport Comm ...

invited 23 firms to tender for a ticket-issuing system and

was successful. The first prototype was installed at Portsmouth & Southsea on 11 November 1982. APTIS, along with the portable system PORTIS, was adopted as part of British Rail's £31 million investment, which was authorised in 1983.Gourvish, Terry (2002). "Cost Control and Investment in the post-Serpell Railway". Chapter 6 In. ''British Rail: 1974-97: From Integration to Privatisation'' Oxford:

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...

. The production APTIS machines had 300 kB of memory; this could be upgraded to 500 kB. Some 2,971 APTIS machines were scheduled to be installed at 1,600 staffed British Rail stations between August 1985 and September 1987.

Phase-out of Edmondson tickets

The first production APTIS tickets were issued in October 1986 at stations including Didcot Parkway and

Abbey Wood Abbey Wood is an List of areas of London, area in southeast London, England, in the Royal Borough of Greenwich and bordering the London Borough of Bexley. It is located east of Charing Cross. According to the 2021 United Kingdom census, 2021 ...

; the official launch was by Transport Minister David Mitchell at the British Rail Travel Centre,

Regent Street Regent Street is a major shopping street in the West End of London. It is named after George IV of the United Kingdom, George, the Prince Regent (later George IV) and was laid out under the direction of the architect John Nash (architect), J ...

, London, on 18 November 1986. The first ticket was sold at Benfleet in January 1987.An apt end for BR's APTIS ''

Rail Rail or rails may refer to: Rail transport *Rail transport and related matters *Railway track or railway lines, the running surface of a railway Arts and media Film * ''Rails'' (film), a 1929 Italian film by Mario Camerini * ''Rail'' (1967 fil ...

'' issue 563 11 April 2007 page 14 In 1988, the last of British Rail's Edmondson

printing press A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a printing, print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in whi ...

es, located at the Paper and Printing Centre,

Crewe Crewe () is a railway town and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire East in Cheshire, England. At the 2021 United Kingdom census, 2021 census, the parish had a population of 55,318 and the built-up area had a population of 74,120. ...

, shut down. The last station to sell Edmondson tickets prior to full APTIS conversion was Emerson Park, on

Network SouthEast Network SouthEast (NSE) was one of the three passenger sectors of British Rail created in 1982. NSE mainly operated commuter rail trains within Greater London and inter-urban services in densely populated South East England, although the networ ...

's Romford to Upminster Line, on 29 June 1989.

Phase-out of APTIS

APTIS survived in widespread use for twenty years, but in the early 2000s was largely replaced by more modern PC based ticketing systems although some APTIS were modified as APTIS-ANT (with no obvious difference to the ticket issued)

Oyster card The Oyster card is a Payment#Types_and_methods_of_payment, payment method for public transport in London and some surrounding areas. A standard Oyster card is a blue ISO/IEC 7810, credit-card-sized Stored-value card, stored-value contactless ...

compatible machines in the Greater London area. The last APTIS machines were removed at the end of 2006 as there was no option to upgrade for accepting Chip and PIN credit-card payments. The last APTIS-ANT ticket to be issued in the UK using one of the machines was at

Upminster station Upminster is an interchange station serving the town of Upminster in the London Borough of Havering, Greater London. It is on the London, Tilbury and Southend line (LTSR), down the line from Fenchurch Street railway station, London Fenchurch St ...

on 21 March 2007.Last APTIS ticket sold ''

Today's Railways UK ''Today's Railways UK'' is an English-based monthly magazine covering rail transport in Great Britain. It was founded by Platform 5 in January 2002 as ''Entrain'' as a sister publication to '' Today's Railways Europe'', in January 2006 it was ...

'' issue 66 June 2007 page 11

References

External links

List of known APTIS machines as of 2004, with name and numbering variants and dates of installation (by route)
archived 23 July 2018 fro
the original