THEY say that some inventions are so perfect that there is no point in updating them but that hasn't stopped the arrival of a new-style of train ticket from Northern.
These tickets - looking like a super-long receipt from the weekly shop at Tesco - were first spotted by rail enthusiasts heading North from Barrow to Workington Model Railway Exhibition a fortnight ago.
They were also seen on the first Sunday morning service from Lancaster to Ulverston for last weekend's Dickensian Festival.
The new ticket machines are being gradually rolled out and come in two parts. A keypad and a large ticket dispenser on a shoulder strap.
They produce a paper two-part return ticket which is a full 15in long - twice the length of the normal card tickets.
Most readers will remember the much smaller, stiff card tickets which were sold to passengers - and which are still in use at preserved lines such as Ravenglass and Haverthwaite.
They were called "Edmondson tickets" and were invented in Cumbria.
They were devised by Lancaster-born Thomas Edmondson, a trained cabinet maker who became station master at Milton, later called Brampton, on the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway.
His invention replaced hand-written paper tickets in the 1840s and were such a good idea what they were used throughout the world and made Edmondson a fortune.
At the peak, British Railways was printing 320m Edmondson tickets a year from its Crewe printworks.
Production was stopped in 1988 and the larger, orange card tickets took over in 1990
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