I have a nice antique ticket validator, and would love to get a new die manufactured to use on our tourist Railroad. Is there anyone that can manufacture such a thing nowadays? Off the top of my head I don't know the manufacturer of the validator, but I can find out tonight when I get home if that is a needed bit of information.

Also, is there a source for ink ribbons nowadays?

Last I heard the company that bought out Joslin could still provide new dies for their model daters and some parts. Ribbon replacements are problematic. I have heard they are getting hard to find. Ray Weart had been repairing daters for people as well as placing orders for new dies for those interested.

That company is Consolidated Stamp Manufacturing Company in Harwood, Illinois.

I know nothing about them, just found a history of Joslin which mentioned their name.

As to re-inking ribbons, in the early days of personal computers devices were sold to allow users to re-ink their own printer ribbons. I don't think they could handle a wide ribbon for a dater, though. However, it wouldn't be too hard to make one.

What is a ticket validator?

I know of the old stamps that would stamp the back of the ticket with the date - but they didn't have ribbons so this must be something different.

That is exactly what a validator is. The striking hammer plate would make the imprint on the ticket with an inked ribbon over a brass or bronze engraved die, much like a typewriter.

Oh! Ok. We always called the “ribbon” an “ink pad” - so that’s where I got confused.

Good museum presentation of a dater (with photo):

https://www.arborwayrailroad.com/station-museum.html

You can easily bring the ribbon back to life. Done it several times on old typewriters.
Unwind the ribbon into a small paper bag. Spray it down with wd40 and let it sit in the closed bag for a few hours. Wear some gloves and pull the ribbon thru a rag to remove excess liquid. Rewind onto the spool and it will print good as new.

The date on a ticket from the validator was evidence the ticket was valid and that it was issued on that date. The auditor of revenue was persnickety that it be done right. The conductor's punch on the ticket was proof it was accepted for transportation by the conductor or trainman whose punch was used. Each conductor or trainman had a unique die on his or her ticket punch.

Reading Company sold old validators, minus the dies, and retired ticket punches on the Iron Horse Rambles. The punches retained their unique dies but R.Co. records would show that the punch was retired and when.

Phil Mulligan

Thanks for explaining how my 2 Champion validators got into circulation. The one without a die has a ribbon that was used at Southampton, Pennsylvania on the Reading's Newtown branch. The one without a ribbon has the die for Washington Lane, Pennsylvania on the Reading's Chestnut Hill branch. Both can stamp years from the mid 1950s to the early 1960s.
Sometime early in this Century I called Champion and found that I could send validators to them to have new ribbons and current years installed.

I was wrong, the brand name of my pair of former Reading Company ticket daters is Centennial.

There were three major makers of ticket validators:

A.D. Joslin - sold as the Cosmo ticket validator - by far the most popular

Centennial - a distant second

Aurora - a few railroads used these

Bouncing this up as I'm still looking for someone who has a lead of a way to get blank validator dies cut nowadays. Tried a few local jewelers but got shot down. Any help?

Maybe photo-engraving could help.

I had some trolley-car center-pin cover plates cast by our local brass foundry. I gave them a good black and white bit-map drawing (.bmp format), they sent that to a photo-engraver who made a very good metal pattern from it.

If photo-engraving could engrave the text for the validator die in a block of metal, a machinist could make it fit in the validator.

The text might need reversing to stamp on the back of the ticket, but that's easy to do with Photoshop or similar programs.

Ray Weart had been offering repairs to Joslin validators and ordering custom dies.

The company that had bought Joslin is Visimark a division of Durable Technologies. As of last year when I contacted them they were still engraving validator dies but had sold all their inventory of parts to Ray Weart.

Here is the website for Durable Technologies
As I said they should still be providing custom engraved dies for Cosmo validators:

https://www.durable-tech.com/