I think tickets stayed pretty much the same up until they adopted the Visa slip type.
The commonest were about credit card sized or a bit less, made of cardboard. The front side would have the name of the railroad, the start and end points. There would also be an authentication mark -- stamp or signature, a date - isuue or expiry, a class -first, coach, pullman...
The backside would have the fine print. A station would usually have a stock of preprinted tickets for major stations .e.g. in Pennsylvania they would have Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, Washington, New York and Chicago and some other big cities online, plus any neighbouring towns. There would also be a pile labelled Cobblers Knob to _____ and the blank filled in by hand or rubber stamp.
Some tickets would be in sections -- out and back perforated (plus a third section).
Major trips involving many railroads would have a very long ticket with a section for each railroad, steamboat, stagecoach company involved. They used to be folded up and fell open like a grandmother's wallet of baby photos.
Most tickets were colour coded -- I remember yellow as popular, but see Mark Twain's essay "Punch, Brothers, Punch".
Some lines, esp. streetcars, would have little illustrations of passengers and the conductor would punch the appropriate picture.
Oh, yes. Conductors' punches: like a one hole punch, the scissors action type, making holes about 1/8" to 3/16" -- all different shapes so that they could be traced .
Any other details you need?