Third or First Class? The RhB’s Ticket Rule Book Provides All the Information

«Allegra, Fahrkarten vorweisen, bitte!»: in this or a similar way, ticket inspection is announced by the train attendants in the carriages of the Rhaetian Railway (RhB). Nowadays, passengers will often reach for their smart phones to show their digital tickets. But how did a ticket inspector know whether a ticket was valid in earlier times? After all, there were not only tickets available for the first or second classes, but also for the third class. In addition, there were special tickets for journeys on Sundays, for military personnel or public employees.

Between 1895 and 1965, a so-called “Musterbuch” provided information. The book was used for docu-mentation and staff training purposes. To be sure, there was not a lot of railways around in 1895: the rail-way network only included the lines from Landquart to Davos and from Landquart via Chur to Thusis. In 1914, however, the railway network was almost as large as it is today; it spans almost 400 kilometres. In recent times, only the Vereina Line has been added.

Today, the old rule book has been restored and is preserved in the Bahnmuseum [Railway Museum] Al-bula in Bergün. And in case you do not know, how the tickets made of brown cardboard used to be made: in the Bahnmuseum Albula’s visible storage room, a ticket printing machine, which was used for more than a century, is on display.