July 1, 1873 Charleston, SC- The South Carolina Railroad Company $2 Fr-SC230-12 Grades vf, very fine. Back before ...

July 1, 1873 Charleston, SC- The South Carolina Railroad Company $2 Fr-SC230-12 Grades vf, very fine. Back before the turn of the century a number of railroads, including many lines that later became part of the Southern Railway System, issued fare coupons or notes that bore a strong resemblance to the bank notes then in use. In many cases, this "railroad currency" circulated just like money-as a medium of exchange. Some of the notes were simply fare tickets, good for the transportation of one or more persons a certain number of miles and deriving their face value from that. Others were printed promises of the railroad to give the bearer railroad service worth a certain amount, freight or passenger transportation or both.Some resembled bank notes even more closely, in that they were issued in money denominations and bore the promise to pay the face amount to the bearer on demand. The full faith and credit of the issuing railroad and the rail service the company stood ready to perform in exchange backed all of them. The railroad currency about which Ties has the most information is that issued in 1873 by the South Carolina Rail Road (later part of Southern Railway!.These "fare tickets, " as they were called, were engraved and printed for the railroad by the American Bank Note Company in New York and bore a marked resemblance to the bank notes then in circulation. One was the basic denomination, good for the transportation of one passenger 25 miles. (Apparently the mile fare was four cents, which would make the fare ticket worth one dollar.) Denominations of Two, Five, Ten and Twenty had a similar scale of values for the transportation of one or more persons. A Corey's Pick