In the early decades of the twentieth century in some areas of the United Kingdom employees provided their workers with pre-paid travel passes for use on local public, or in some cases, the company’s own private transport services (i.e. buses and/or trains).  These travel passes were particularly common in the South Wales and Great North Coalfields but are also known to have been used by some War Department contractors and ordnance/munitions factories. Typically each travel pass was individually numbered so as to be specific to the worker to whom it was issued.

Rare examples of such passes are known to have been used by at least one large engineering contracting company who, in 1914, were engaged in a significant Contract awarded By the British Government’s War Department to build fifteen army training camps north of Salisbury in Wiltshire.

A workman’s railway travel pass used on train services between Salisbury and Codford or Heytesbury in Wiltshire.  These were issued for free travel to and from work to the employees of the construction company Sir John Jackson Limited. In 1914  this company was contracted by the War Department to build several army training camps north of Salisbury

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