Luxury Railway Travel

A Social and Business History

Martyn Pring

• Editorial: Pen & Sword Transport
• Año: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781526713261
• Categoría: Tecnología e ingeniería
• Categoría: Transporte ferroviario

"R eads like an extravagant time travel through Britain's opulence era where train travel was just as stylish and fanciful as the elite class themselves." — Manhattan with a Twist Martyn Pring has carried out considerable research tracing the evolution of British luxury train travel weaving railway, social and travel history threads around a number of Britain's mainline routes traditionally associated with glamorous trains. Drawing on contemporary coverage, he chronicles the luxury products and services shaped by railway companies and hospitality businesses for Britain's burgeoning upper and middle classes and wealthy overseas visitors, particularly Americans, who demanded more civilized and comfortable rail travel. By Edwardian times, a pleasure-palace industry emerged as entrepreneurs, hotel proprietors, local authorities and railway companies all collaborated developing upscale destinations, building civic amenities, creating sightseeing and leisure pursuits and in place-making initiatives to attract prosperous patrons. Luxury named trains delivered sophisticated and fashionable settings encouraging a golden age of civilized business and leisure travel. Harkening back to the inter-war years, modern luxury train operators now redefine and capture the allure and excitement of dining and train travel experiences. "Martyn's extraordinarily beautiful book is more than a collection of classic railway posters—it describes a way of life that's now lost in the mists of the twentieth century... As a piece of social history, this book is faultless, and a precious reminder of luxury and class distinction... [a] fabulous book. Exceptional." — Books Monthly "A comprehensive account of luxury 'hotel trains, ' dining trains and the presentations of heritage railways brings the story to its unexpected conclusion... this is a lively take on a neglected topic." — BackTrack

CHAPTER 1

1860-1900: Victorian Expansion – The Emergence of Luxury Travel

From the late seventeenth century, it was fashionable for British and continental elites to visit Europe’s cultural centres. A personal pilgrimage known as a ‘Grand Tour’ of Europe would be conducted taking months or even years depending on one’s resources and family connections. It was a foundation stone and rite of passage for the young. Its influence was pervasive, providing the basis for the modern tourism phenomenon. Until the 1800s, travelling for pleasure or non-work reasons was restricted to a narrow band of wealthy upper-class men. Few people made lengthy journeys but the visitation of crucial sites of European civilisation was a keystone of privilege, mobility, individual needs for cultivation and education, expanding social horizons and marking one’s place in society. By the end of the eighteenth century, the word ‘tourist’ had entered the English and French languages, just as ‘tourism’ entered the official lexicon with an 1811 entry in the Oxford English Dictionary. At the same time the term ‘tourifying’ and the acquisition of objects from around the world was coined by hardened travellers such as Byron and William Bankes. Britain’s glorious landscapes – the Scottish Highlands, the Lake District – were painted and filled with tourists for the first time.

Whilst tourism was not a creation of the railways, before their arrival, long-distance travel could only be accomplished by walking, by horse and carriage and on water by rowing or by sailing vessels. Non-mechanised transport modes would be replaced by steam-based technologies but, even now, walking for pleasure and the horse still form important leisure pursuits. As a primary transport mode, the horse and carriage would ultimately be jettisoned to another age, but it did not disappear totally and without a fight even on journeys involving several hundreds of miles. In its fight to survive railway intrusion, the horse-drawn coach held an advantage. Public stage vehicles made point to point journeys from town centre inns, which for many passengers were conveniently located whereas new railway stations were largely located out of town. The mid-century represented the final stand-off between the railways and the horse-drawn carriage era as a long-distance method of transport. Still, it was a well-connected and established industry with specialist manufacturers producing coaches for the transit of mail, the public and for rich private owners, providing the means to convey them at will. Private carriages were renowned for their comfort with well-cushioned seats and seat-backs. Elegant in appearance, built with quality finishes they provided a luxury product for the wealthy, delivering a means of travel and private social space. Horse-drawn carriages were a centuries-old tradition with many influential supporters such as Charles Dickens.

Mark Twain, a seasoned traveller across America, took the view stage-coaching was ‘infinitely more delightful than railroading’ and lost no time in sharing his view with his readers in The Innocents Abroad in 1869. Yet the transition from the horse-drawn coach to the train was not entirely smooth and without problems especially for the privileged. Town centre inns – good or bad – were staging posts, a focus of activity and places of enjoyment but the railway stations in the early days tended to be desolate spots until adequate waiting rooms and hospitality arrangements were developed by emerging operators. This all took time, providing the horse-drawn carriage with an extended life until the emergence of private and public motors cars at the turn of the twentieth century. The horse-drawn carriage as a form of long-distance transport eventually succumbed to railway expansion as the new industry had significantly lower operating costs and scale, providing travellers with the benefits of speedier and more comfortable means of transit.

But before the arrival of regular rail passenger services, a new industrial world had a say in developments and in shaping passenger transport. The mining of coal, tin and other extractive industries used in the production of iron and steel and other metal products gave rise to rapid industrialisation; a process that had begun in the second half of the eighteenth century. Aside from coastal maritime transport, the railways played their part as they gradually supplanted canal traffic as the means to move large quantities of raw materials used in manufacturing processes. This could be undertaken as railways were speedier than horse-drawn or steam-powered barge.

New industries attracted people from the countryside who were required to work in commercial enterprises, leading to a swift expansion of towns and city settlements that were once villages. Industrial development would take place on land owned by the aristocracy, providing valuable windfalls for mineral extraction, the selling of rights and for commercial and urban housing development. Professor David Cannadine, writing in 1990 in his book Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (YUP) takes the view that:

‘the British gentry and grandees were, collectively speaking, the wealthiest of the European territorial élites. In part, this was because they came to the most profitable terms with the Industrial Revolution. Britain was after all, the first nation to industrialize, the patricians themselves owned so much of the land surface, and they were more advantageously placed to exploit the minerals beneath than many continental owners. As a result, there were also more very wealthy grandees.’

Similarly, Professor Harold Perkin in The Rise of Professional Society (Routledge, 1989) took the view that by the second-half of Victoria’s reign, there was a succession of ‘landed business men’ who were prime movers in the development of railways firmly establishing themselves as part of a new industrial plutocracy of rich and powerful figures. Many landowners, unsurprisingly, were fleet-footed in extorting as much as possible from railway companies for their land rights, although in time, many were to realize the commercial and travel access benefits of having railways close at hand. Thus, railways were embedded in the so-called mid-Victorian economic boom delivering unprecedented prosperity.

Whilst aristocracy benefited from industrialisation, they were likewise joined by the ascendancy of the new commercial and industrial upper middle-classes; they were the revolution engineers and creators of Victorian wealth. Naturally, they wanted better residential places to live and to travel so by the mid-1800s, many resorts near London were connected by the railway and thereby, according to Perkin, ‘subtly graduated in the social hierarchy of middle-class values’. Rapid urban expansion ensured station locations were eventually absorbed within the central confines of towns and cities which by mid-Victorian times had grown tremendously.

In later years, these stations connected to the new spoke-like suburban railways surrounding London and other large urban centres in the Midlands and the north, allowing the wealthy middle-class to decamp en masse. As Perkin commented, this provided the perfect environment for ‘the well-to-do middle class to live miles from their work in the fresh air of the country or at the seaside, and for an increasing number of lower middle-class clerks and even well-paid artisans to live on the fringes of the built-up areas’. The suburban railways, and in later times the tram and omnibus, became the means of separating residential neighbourhoods by social grouping. This in turn speeded up the flight of the wealthier classes to the new suburbs, places described as ‘compact self-contained villages within walking distance of the station’. This process was not only restricted to London and the south east, since Birmingham and Chester had their own high-class suburban neighbourhoods by mid-century.

London as the Empire’s financial and commercial heart, fuelled a growth in high-class outer suburbs made up of loosely settled communities. The notion of long-distance commuting had been introduced. These were made up of a relatively small group of rich upper middle-class and an increasing number of middle-class workers who made their living in the City, typically with incomes of between £1,000 and £5,000 per year. They had both the time and the money to afford first-class season tickets. The idea of the ‘city-flyer’ is nothing new but whilst they are not an endangered species, their commuter first-class carriage may be.

In July 2017, the British government unveiled consultation plans to scrap segregated first-class compartments on crowded commuter trains in a move to ease rush-hour passenger congestion pressures. In Victorian Britain, there was quite naturally a desire to travel amongst elite society that comprised moneyed aristocracy and the new upper middle-classes who had acquired the habits and tastes of the upper-classes, seeing themselves as increasingly mobile, driven by travel stories of exploration from Britain’s expanding empire interests. The ability to travel at leisure was fuelled by growth in the power and wealth of the better-off middle-classes. As historian Lawrence James notes, the middle-classes by late Victorian times ‘had gradually supplanted the old aristocracy of pedigrees and acres, but they desperately wanted to absorb its finer qualities and, by doing so, justify their ascendancy’. Travel was considered one of the better things of life, and for this group apart, the ability to see more of the country and the wider world became a key aspiration in order to demonstrate arrival. This did not always go down well with aristocracy since the arrival of the motor car in the early years of the twentieth century ensured country homes were more accessible, threatening one of the landed elite’s ‘most cherished institutions’ of country isolation and an ordered life.

The car, according to David Cannadine, gave rise to the ‘quintessentially plutocratic custom’ of the weekend house party. A combination of express trains and station pick up by motor car ensured that many country estates easily accessed from London became fashionable for the weekend invitation. With such access, quite naturally, the middle-classes wanted places in the sun. If the English coastal destinations of Kent and Sussex were insufficient, then sun drenched Mediterranean hot spots provided ideal locations, all suitably aided by new continental railway networks with their safer, secure and faster means of admittance to the Azur coast. What once took days could be accommodated in hours in later Victorian years. And with it, the English colonisation of the French and Italian Riviera had begun in earnest.

The developments taking place in Britain were only achieved by the railway networks continuing roll out, as promoters by the second third of the nineteenth century saw unrivalled opportunities. Such was the clamour amongst the public to obtain an investment in the future, a temporary stall to railway development was to follow as the bubble burst but, by the early 1850s, a period of consolidation began, as a new age of Victorian empire-building activity saw the emergence of Britain’s industrial classes take central stage. Factories and warehouses and other commercial activity sprang up alongside railways. With lineside development came a new breed of entrepreneur and manager with the necessary skills to run embryonic enterprises. This gave rise to the business traveller, as journeys could be made the length and breadth of the country in support of visiting other commercial establishments. Railway companies eventually saw opportunities as business and leisure travellers all demanded better services. People with means began to travel more widely than ever before. The almost universal use of standardised ‘railway time’ made planning journeys far easier for both business travellers and for the leisured classes.

Whilst railways might have displaced long-distance horse-drawn transport, the horse continued to play a key role in the lives of the privileged as railway companies tried to encourage society’s upper echelons by running trains with special wagons where individual horse-drawn carriages were attached. It must also be remembered that by mid-Victorian times it was quite common to find members of the aristocracy appearing on the boards of railway companies, particularly when they were close to where railways traversed country estates. Such influence gave way to specialist private carriages (and private station halts, in time) but the movement of horse by rail was one of the last remnants of privileged Victorian travel before the private motor car took central stage. In Britain, horse boxes would be added to passenger trains as profitable side lines to goods and freight. David Wragg in The Race to the North (Pen and Sword, 2013) informs us that on the Anglo-Scottish routes ‘there was even an overnight express for horses and (private) carriages so that these would be waiting for their owners when they arrived’. Moving horses around during the First World War, together with the rapid expansion of the horse racing industry in the twentieth century, created horse box wagons, a phenomenon to last well in to the nationalised railway era.

By mid-Victorian times, the benefits of industrialisation could be seen with an increasing level of leisure time afforded to a large proportion of the working population. A six-day working week for many left Sunday free. The opportunities to explore further afield flourished as railway mania progressively gripped Britain. From the 1840s onwards, the country was on the move in a way that had never been seen before. An increasingly mobile public prompted railway companies to move beyond their original purposes as transporters of industrial freight and cargo by identifying people with a keen desire to travel. Excursion traffic became an accepted railway activity, representing a good source of income for the companies involved as they consolidated and expanded their networks. A standardised track width (with the Great Western’s seven feet and a quarter inch broad gauge and Ireland’s imposed five feet three inch gauge as exceptions) enabled passengers to travel long-distances without changing trains. For the first time, railways provided Britain’s ordinary masses with access to daily outings and short excursions.

Society was beginning to change as for first time all social classes were able to experience unfamiliar vistas, cultures and surroundings far from home. Many of these trips were to seaside locations but not always so. Attractive market towns were often in close proximity to large urban conurbations and easily accessible by rail. Responding to customer demand, railway companies were adept at putting on trains for a variety of specific events. In 1836, the Bodmin & Wadebridge Railway achieved a degree of notoriety by running a day out excursion for a public execution. There may have been some confusion in date recording but Dr Susan Major reports ‘In April 1840 an excursion ran from Wadebridge in Cornwall, with three trains carrying 1,100 people, to see the public execution of the Lightfoot brothers at Bodmin Gaol’.1 Despite the ghoulish nature, this was perhaps a precursor to the modern events-based industry so readily at play nowadays. In addition, there was the emergence of excursion agents, enterprising individuals who worked with railway operators to organise and promote planned railway trips. Many of their services were targeted at ordinary working people with an unpretentious aim of transporting large numbers of customers on day trips.

Trips involving an overnight stay or longer were simply beyond the means of many of the working classes. Whilst the adoption of sophisticated marketing practice was perhaps the best part of a century away, social class segmentation could be clearly seen in the 1840s. Major notes the embracing of market segregation techniques at an early stage of development by the railway companies as ‘the working classes went on “trips”, the middle classes went on “excursions” and the upper classes went on “tours”’. At the top end of the spectrum, excursion agent entrepreneurs positioned their businesses accordingly. Whilst Thomas Cook over time has received plaudits for single-handedly developing the excursion business, this is not exactly the case as they were just one of several specialist agents operating at the time.

Cook’s began life as a business running short excursions for temperance campaigners but ‘his long-term strategy lay in the direction of tourism rather than excursions.’2 Temperance societies were good customers for the nascent Cook organisation. He was not only able to lever strong relationships with colleagues in the temperance movement but also with key railway company contacts to create packages for middle-class customers of longer duration. As Major reflects:

‘Cook’s role in the invention of excursions is significant, but it is as one of the first creators of “tours” as a rounded experience and combined tickets, rather than cheap trips, pioneering, for example, annual tours from South Wales through Birmingham to the north of England and to Edinburgh.’

Thomas Cook and another agent, Joseph Crisp, focused their attentions on middle-class tourists with longer and more expensive tours using first and second-class ticketing arrangements. By 1845, Liverpool-based Crisp was already offering continental excursions, reflecting fast-changing travel pattern demands as European railway networks expanded.

Public clamour for greater comfort and more elegant surroundings surfaced especially as quality hotels were springing up around railway termini. However, at first, railway companies had an arm’s length relationship with their running, so the better facilities found at an end of a railway journey was yet to be transferred to the railway carriage. But the first appearances of class distinction could be seen in coach design, construction and in standards of overnight accommodation. Railway companies took notice, responding to the needs of travellers who were no longer prepared to put up with standards previous generations endured with stage-coach travel. Yet this did not occur overnight as during the mid-part of the centur...