British Rail’s short experiment with travelling pubs | Hacker News Reader

British Rail’s short experiment with travelling pubs

ianvisits.co.uk

101 pointsedward139 comments

The real problem here is cask ale - the preferred pint in Britain - is ruined by movement. Casks are left to settle in pub cellars for days or weeks before being hooked up to the hand pumps in the bar.

The only way this works for beer is to use kegs, which is what most of the World uses but the largest consumer organisation in the UK - CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale - was created to fight against. And with some success - cask brewing is now a massive growth area in the UK.

That said, this looks considerably better than the over-priced plastic nonsense from the "onboard shop" or "at seat service" we have to suffer today.

I don't think I'd want to go near one without a British Transport Police officer nearby if a bunch of football fans were making a journey to an away game.

Keg brewing has really taken off here in recent years as well.

CAMRA are indeed all about 'real', cask ale. But the organisation was created to fight against the encroaching lagerisation of everything. In the 70s and 80s (from what I can tell, I didn't pass legal drinking age until 1996) the beer scene in the UK was dire. Mass produced lagers were about the only thing on offer, the likes of Carling, Fosters, Stella etc. You'd usually find there was a 'bitter' on tap in most pubs, but it would be a bland, mass produced brown beer like John Smiths or Tetleys. Even in the early 00s many pubs had a bunch of lagers and a concession to other beer types in the form of a single tap of fullers "London Pride". The traditional breweries were suffering and the real art to beer making was being lost in the UK, despite our rich history of it.

At the same time, supermarket sales and home drinking were impacting on the pub, which had been a traditional social hub for a lot of the country for a long time.

So in stepped CAMRA to promote real pubs and real British beer, with real, varying flavours and an eye to tradition. It was a roaring success, though slow-burning at first. Now they hold massive festivals, local real ale breweries are everywhere, pubs have a wide selection of great stuff again.

The craft revolution some years later took them by surprise. Their attitude to good beer in a keg seems to be "well it's not exactly what we're about, but great! People are taking an interest!". AFAICT they've decided the cask is their focus, but so long as we're not going back to the days of five lagers and a substandard 'bitter' on tap in every pub you go to, then we're all good.

Those days were even still around when I first moved to Cardiff. 90% of pubs only served Brains beers, which are...average at best, and lagers. It was so bad that the Cardiff morris dancing side has had a 30-40 year tradition of piling on a bus and going for drinking tours up the South Wales valleys just to find good beer.

I must admit that I am partial to asking the bartender to take the sparkler off the cask tap when pouring a pint. I grew up with flat beer and sparklers seem to be an industry way of trying to sell bitter to people who expect beer to be fizzy.

Thankfully it has changed for the better, but I am worried about the effects of the lockdown on the upstart good-beer pubs. My local had finally given into my nagging and was permanently keeping a dark beer on tap, which is a rare find here; IPAs and the like are much more popular :D

Interesting. Down here in Southampton there aren't often sparklers on ale taps.

Apparently in England (can't speak for Wales) there's a regional divide - Us southerners like a relatively flat ale, with no real head. In the north a beer ought to have a bit of fizz and hold a foamy head.

Yeah I wonder if the lockdown is going to kill any of the local industry. There are three or four decent ale and craft bars in walking distance of my house, and I'd like to keep it that way.

Yeah that's pretty much my experience as well. Wales seems to follow the north in liking sparklers, although there's fewer darker beers/bitters over here. I grew up in the Cotswolds with nice flat bitters, so I struggled when I first moved over here :D

All this talk of beer, could murder a proper pint in a proper pub right now! Still, have to wait I suppose.

A local pub near me is giving away their beer, I think a lot will as it will go bad otherwise.

My local is actually doing takeaway beer (they had a license for it before this), and it has been so popular that they keep running out of cartons.

I wondered about that! Restaurants all over town have signs on them, advertising bottles and cases for sale.

Maybe someone could do a VR "proper pub experience"? ;-)

That's most Saturday nights in VRChat, even before COVID-19.

What's a 'sparkler'? From the context, it sounds like some sort of supplementary carbonation system.

It's a small plastic attachment which the beer is forced through, causing it to froth up with tiny bubbles. Allows you to form a head on a pint of bitter without having to add any gas and in theory makes it taste a bit thicker. Reference image: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...

That sounds like a "widget" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widget_(beer)

A widget goes in the bottom of a can, and IIRC, releases nitrogen when you open the can forming lots of microbubbles in the beer, creating a smooth head on pouring.

A sparkler is like the aerator on a hand washing tap, it screws on to the beer dispensing tap (the one fixed to the bar, not a keg tap). It aerates, or they used to. Beer technology has moved on a lot in the more-than-a-decade since I was the wrong side of the bar.

I recently finished reading Pete Brown's Man Walks Into A Pub: A Sociable History of Beer, which is a good and quite humorous introduction to the history of beer in Great Britain. I'd recommend it to anyone taking an initial interest in the subject. I've followed up by starting Brown's next book, Three Sheets To The Wind: One Man's Quest For The Meaning Of Beer.

Since the start of lock-down in mid-March, I'm now brewing my fourth batch of home brew. I recently purchased Durden Park Beer Circle's Old British Beers and How to Make Them[1] book. I'm looking forward to trying out a few of the old recipes.

I am also worried about the potential closure of a couple of good pubs serving craft beer in my location. I even contacted the owner of my local to suggest I support him by buying beer directly to take home, but he said regulations prevent him and he didn't want to risk his licence. Hopefully they'll be able to open again soon.

[1] https://durdenparkbeer.org.uk/

Nice.

I'm a homebrewer myself. Used to use home-made fly-sparging kit but have moved to BIAB because it's so much less cleanup and still gives great results.

I have a Saison coming towards the end of its fermentation at the moment, to be kegged soon. I know it's not 'real ale' that way ... I've had some good results bottling stouts in the past but the preparation and cleanup is so much more than kegging, and my attempts at emulating a cask have been poor.

> cask ale - the preferred pint in Britain

Not really - according to 2018 on-trade numbers, ale is 24% by value of beer sold, and cask is 55% of ale, so cask ale is just 13.2% of all beer:

https://www.marstons.co.uk/docs/reports/2018/on-trade-beer-r...

(this is published by Marston's, but i believe the data is for the whole industry)

Train passengers who want a drink are not necessarily the same demographic as pub-goers, but i'm not sure i'd expect them to skew significantly towards cask ale.

> is ruined by movement

Which is why the cutting-edge high-technology solution of "bottles" has been invented. Honestly, i find bottled beers usually better than the cask equivalent, even when i'm not on a train, i think because cask is so sensitive to keeping, whereas bottles usually reach you in mint condition. Although it might just be because the bottled versions are sometimes stronger:

https://www.adnams.co.uk/articles/adnams-broadside-cask-and-...

Those numbers are from 2018. The train-pub in question was from 1949, and at the time ale would have been overwhelmingly the beer of choice - I suspect pilsner/lager wouldn't have been widely available in the UK.

I'm actually surprised cask ale is as high as 13.2% of all beer sold. While "craft beer" (I hate that term) is en vogue and has made people curious to more traditional style beer, the default pint in most pubs will be something lagery like Carling, Tennents or Carlsberg (all three pretty bad, but Tennent's has a nostalgia factor for me).

> Tennent's has a nostalgia factor for me

Me too. I rented a flat right next to the cathedral when doing a semester as an exchange student in Glasgow 20 years ago. What I did't get was how someone, at some point, sold that plot of land next to a 1000 year old cathedral and cemetery, to the smelly Tennent's brewery! Every time I walked past I'd wonder who had agreed to that, and when. City planning disaster, that. I don't remember much from the semester itself but and I blame that on Tennent's too.

The Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh, which is right next door to the royal palace of Holyroodhouse, is on the site of an old brewery:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Parliament_Building#L...

If you think about our most notorious pub chain - 'spoons - they generally have a decent selection of cask, so I'm not that surprised that it makes up a decent amount.

Could never use them again after how they have reacted to the pandemic.

The reasons to boycott Spoons have been piling up for years. The strongarming of breweries, the use of the pubs as a pro-Brexit platform... and the bloke in charge is a notorious bellend.

Wetherspoons is cheap, but it's not a net good. (Truth be told I stopped eating there after being served a frozen curry - literally solid ice.)

Good point, I often forget about them becuase while they're not rare in Scotland, they're not quite as commonplace as down south.

> ale is 24% by value of beer sold, and cask is 55% of ale, so cask ale is just 13.2% of all beer:

Interesting that they separate out stouts into their own category at 7%. I guess maybe because Guinness dominates stout and that's not a cask ale. I'd have counted it as part of "ale", myself...

> Honestly, i find bottled beers usually better than the cask equivalent,

Aww no, couldn't disagree more. Cask beer is fresh, bottled beer not so much. Even in a bottle, the fragrant, lighter hoppy aromas disappear pretty quickly, so there are whole dimensions missing from the product...

IMHO of course, your preference is yours and not wrong.

They also usually add some gas to the bottles, if I remember correctly, which does affect the taste. Not necessarily for the worse, but it is noticeable. It's pretty obvious in Hobgoblin, but I still like the bottle flavour and it even survives being in a car boot in a French summer.

I imagine the only reason not to do bottles is because they're liable to being turned into projectiles, but I guess you could just serve it in one of those crap plastic glasses like they would from a cask anyway.

Real Ale in a bottle would continue to condition slightly so depending on the yeast strain I'd expect bottled beer to change flavour slightly.

Also because of the way cask ale is dispensed it's pretty much always oxidized after the first couple of pints are pulled so that might be the change in taste you're noticing, since it's in the bottle it doesn't get oxidized.

Rather than adopt the keg, I'd much prefer to see a gyroscopically balanced cask :D

Doubt we'll see much increase in alcohol sales on trains again now though. A lot of lines already have a ban on drinking due to so many problems. Near me there's a ban between Pontypridd and Merthyr Tydfil specifically, but not the rest of that line.

On the Rhymney line I think the ban runs all the way to Cardiff. I remember people hiding the drinks until they came out of the tunnel and then they'd crack them all open. Also nice seeing Wales represented on here!

Haha yeah there's not a huge Wales contingent on here from what I've seen!

I take that line from Chester down to Bristol quite often.

I’m in Merthyr

Lager is far more popular than cask ale in the UK. Cask ale isn't the preferred pint.

https://yougov.co.uk/ratings/food/popularity/beer-cider/all

Probably doesn't make a huge difference in outcome, but brand recognition wouldn't be the best metric here because Cask is quite often a local/smaller brewery as opposed to one of the big boys a la San Miguel etc.

Lager is also cheaper, which matters if you're defining a pint as a pint in a pub. We are a nation of alcoholics, lots of people drink at home.

Cask brewing was a growth area but CAMRA essentially won and made themselves redundant. CAMRA's initial aim was "good beer", but like many things the spirit was forgotten and only the simple rule remained: cask ale (and bottle conditioned ale) is real and anything is is inferior. Since then the US has become a world player in beer and good beer is mainstream now. As far as I know CAMRA are softening when it comes to kegs, especially now there are types that don't involve artificial CO_2/N_2 introduction but last much longer than casks due to no O_2 introduction.

The Swiss federal railways experimented with rolling supermarkets [0], a rolling Starbucks [1][2] and a rolling McDonald's [3].

[0] https://www.srf.ch/static/cms/images/960w/3527cc.jpg

[1] http://media7.news.ch/news/680/339117-c0ed039d03cc1b9f5e5986...

[2] https://img.blick.ch/news/2535226-v4-starbucks-mitarbeiterin...

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRYaL_A4ftM

Umm....we still have this in India. But far far more luxurious. Think gin & tonic in a Presidential Suite, traveling on a train in between sand dunes... with wifi and instagram.

And infinitely better food than a British pub ;)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maharajas%27_Express

https://www.the-maharajas.com/maharajas/maharajas-express-ph...

>And infinitely better food than a British pub ;)

This is an old trope. Like the English language, British cuisine takes all the good bits from everywhere and if you go to pubs in England you can find some terrific food. Of course, it can very variable, but all in all I'd say London is shoulder to shoulder with Naples as the food capitals of Europe.

Spent 5 years in London. If found an average cafe/takeaway/pub (worked in one) is gonna be quite sad especially when compared the average with any other country (except Scandinavia).

Yeah, absolutely. Now, the high end is fantastic, but the average meal was _not good_.

I can't tell if this is serious or satire, especially given the "English language" comparison. It's either a stupendous comment or just stupendously ignorant, and I can't seem to figure out which. Kudos, I guess? :o)

Some British pubs have been amongst literally the best restaurants in the world - as judged by the French, of all people. You know they wouldn't be giving a British pub any kind of award lightly.

Outliers don't define the mean though.

There are a lot of good ones around.

Even the middling pubs seem to make some sort of effort these days.

Since the smoking ban a lot of pubs have had to reinvent themselves and many went “gastro”

You're right, British cuisine does take all the good bits from everywhere, but then brings them down to its level ;)

While I've definitely had great food in pubs and I agree that London has spectacular food options, I'd still opine that across England as a whole, "good pub food" is the exception rather than the norm.

It's 100% the norm in plenty of areas of Britain.

Here in the Cotswolds we're spoilt for choice - there's at least one good food pub in pretty much every village. The same's true of the Yorkshire Dales, much of Mid-Wales, much of the South-West, and so on.

Generally in the ex-industrial areas it'll be less impressive. Pub food in much of the Midlands, for example, is essentially whatever's offered by the owning chain (often Marstons or Greene King). But it's not necessarily terrible, and there are some smaller chains who are pretty good (e.g. Brunning & Price). It's more a function of the fact that the pub is ubiquitous in British society - you wouldn't expect haute cuisine from a bar in the Midwest either.

American here.

I lived in the Midlands for half a year, and I've spent a good deal of time in the American rust belt as well (via a job where I had to travel a lot). A typical English meal is significantly more bland than meals served elsewhere in the world, and I think it throws people off who don't already have a relationship with it and therefore can't perceive it as comfort food. It took me months to warm up to.

That's not to say "food in England is bad". I'm ethnically Hispanic, and ended up eating a ton of Turkish food and Indian food during my time there, which was spicy, flavorful, not too common in America at the time, and awesome. And a full English breakfast with your friends when you're all a bit hungover is perfection.

> Here in the Cotswolds we're spoilt for choice - there's at least one good food pub in pretty much every village.

To be fair for every Green Dragon (Cowley) or Tunnel House (Coates / Sapperton) there are plenty of tourist traps selling pre-made cook-chill food from microwaves or tired carveries.

The Tunnel House is great. The Daneway at the other end is very different in character but equally enjoyable.

I think the tourist trap pubs are largely restricted to the few honeypots - Bourton-on-the-Water springs to mind, but then I've had good pub food in both Stow and Broadway.

>> Generally in the ex-industrial areas

These are the places people actually live.

Not exclusively -- London's the biggest city, and more generally the south east of England covers one tenth of the land area but has over one third of the UK population living there. So lots of people live down south, as well as in the industrial north.

Can't remember exactly where it was now (Cambridge-way) but I went to (what looked like) a traditional English pub that happened to serve really good Thai food. Slightly bizarre pairing but very tasty.

There are a lot of those around. There's a pretty good on in Brighton.

Thai restaurant upstairs, pub downstairs (where you can order the Thai food too).

Similar thing near me in London, very middling karaoke pub with pretty decent curry from upstairs.

There was no separation, it was an English pub serving Thai grub rather than a double premises. The chef was apparently of some note although I didn't look into it.

That's the Wrestlers on Newmarket Road :)

It might've been but I don't think it was actually in Cambridge if memory serves.

The Navigator in Shelford is another good Thai-food pub in the area.

the best food in London is always in the restaurants from the places the British colonized: Indian, Middle eastern, American, etc. English food - traditionally English food - is better than it used to be, but still down the gastro list.

Those are all British now. Just as words have etymologies, cuisine (and probably most aspects of culture, really) travels and becomes adopted.

Technically yes but no. The source products are not great and the implementations vary much for the worse.

》London is shoulder to shoulder with Naples as the food capitals ^ yeah... <insert expletive here>

Before I had my daughter we used to spend a lot of time in restaurants in London and there is some really great food around.

The run of the mill food-serving court is way better in Napoli or in other Mediterranean countries compared to the similar locations in London (or in other Northern big cities) for the simple reason that those Mediterranean locations have easier and cheaper access to fresher (and better) food.

Maybe some high-end London locations have the same easy access to fresh and better food (via dedicated airplane rides), but that does not make London one of "the food capitals of Europe".

This is a classic example of taking a genuine point (some things especially tomatoes really are better in Italy) and going too far with sweeping claims; London has always had fresh fish. The fishing industry is not what it used to be but the catch is still landed from the North Sea, driven to Billingsgate in the early morning and eaten that day.

If you happen to select veg that is actually available local and in season, you can get it fresh. That means you have to be a bit selective; the most premium example is probably asparagus. Lots of UK veg growing is in nearby counties like Kent.

The British reputation for disastrous food is mostly a legacy of rationing combined with a slightly colder temperate climate, and ceased to be representative in the 90s.

I think it's because many British people culturally don't value food much. Supermarkets are particularly poor. You need to go out of your way to get nice things.

It may not be as bad as it was in the 90s, but I still find nicer stuff in supermarkets in Spain, France, Germany.

Of course I'm not usually shopping at the equivalent of Tescos on the outskirts of town when I visit a supermarket on the continent, but I'm not exactly searching hard either.

Food in London is great, and varied. I don't much enjoy most Asian food, but London has a lot of it, in a way that e.g. Paris isn't as good at. OTOH I've had a much better hit rate, and at cheaper prices, in Barcelona for great food in restaurants, ethnicity aside.

>It may not be as bad as it was in the 90s, but I still find nicer stuff in supermarkets in Spain, France, Germany.

Sainsbury and Tesco are on par with Carrefour and Mercadona. Waitrose is on par with or better than Albert Heijn. But the Chinese supermarkets through Europe have the best value and range of ingredients for cooking, imo.

>I don't much enjoy most Asian food

I'm so sorry. :(

You said it. The culinary tour of British fine dining is non-stop.

I downvoted because I found your claim that London does not have access to fresh food to be unlikely and unsubstantiated

Afaik there are no agricultural fields surrounding London nor there is any fresh see-food to speak of. I've visited London only once 10 years ago but I don't remember any fishermen bringing their catch in the morning in downtown London and I'm pretty sure things have not changed since then.

Later edit: Please do substantiate your point in what you think makes London food great, with some examples, maybe I've been living in the dark all this time in thinking that a place that glorifies "fish and chips" cannot be the "culinary capital of Europe".

For catering and restaurants:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Spitalfields_Market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billingsgate_Fish_Market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smithfield%2C_London#Market

You have to arrive at these markets extremely early in the morning. This is the case with any b2b market, e.g. Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsukiji_fish_market

Smithfield market is a really interesting place, and if you can believe it smack dab in the middle of the market is a fantastic cocktail bar – Oriole[1]. Unfortunately they're closed now due to the coronavirus, but once they reopen I highly recommend a visit.

In the meantime if you're into cocktails the bar manager of Nightjar (same owners as Oriole) has some great videos online: https://www.diffordsguide.com/g/1151/tonys-cocktails

I am not affiliated with Oriole or Nightjar in any way, just a huge fan. (So much a fan that I've flown in to the UK on several occasions just to go to these places, can't praise them enough!)

[1]: https://www.oriolebar.com/

I've just google image searched for the Spitalfields Market, apparently people in here believe that plums and avocado grow just outside of London (because that's what I saw in those photos).

What I'm saying is that London cannot compete with countries/provinces where plums or what have you grow just a 15-min van drive away from said restaurants, and as such calling a city like London "the food capital of Europe" is a joke. Anyway, also calling Napoli the "food capital of Europe is a joke" because of its size and population density, I can assure you that a 2- or 3-hour drive to the South can get you to some random Calabria small town with way better food than you can get in most of Napoli.

But the food-mania is high with many people who think that just because a place happens to have money it also has good food.

Plums grow in England. I don't know where you got the idea that they aren't possible to be local produce or the idea that you cannot run a good restaurant more than 15 minutes drive from a plum tree. I think the food mania is in the room but it's not coming from me.

> I've just google image searched for the Spitalfields Market, apparently people in here believe that plums and avocado grow just outside of London (because that's what I saw in those photos).

London is only 35 miles away from the sea, how far do you think it is to a field.

As to your Van Drive: For example, Brixham (160 miles) is a popular place to get high quality seafood for the posher end of the restauraunts, this is ~3hr30. Getting fresh ingredients to london is a completely solved problem.

I was really confused by this comment because Spitalfields market as far as I know isn't really a food market, or at least isn't these days; but what they're probably referring to is New Spitalfields Market, i.e. not the one in the City. I wonder why they chose the same name as the old market, super confusing.

There are two Spitalfields Markets - one near Shoreditch and one near Hackney (the "New Spitalfields"). This is probably leading to some confusion

Fish and Chips is a staple of the working classes, it's not supposed to be fine dining.

What do the poor eat where you come from?

Also, "I've visited London only once 10 years ago but I don't remember any fishermen bringing their catch in the morning": Restaurants will be stocking up roughly when dawn breaks, and not through the front door.

> I've visited London only once 10 years ago but I don't remember any fishermen bringing their catch in the morning in downtown London

Billingsgate fish market opens at 4am and closes at 8am. Peak is 4am to 5am (by which time all the best fish will have been sold); if you want a bargain you wait until 7am.

https://www.intotheblue.co.uk/blog/2017/06/26/billingsgate-f...

This conversation is a bit weird. There's plenty of terrible food in London. I don't think anyone would disagree with that. But there is also a lot of very good food in London. I guess it depends what you mean by good food, but there are over 60 restaurants with Michelin stars. (3 with 3 stars, 10 with 2 stars).

(I upvoted you. I think you're wrong but you're polite and adding to the conversation.)

I downvoted it, since the comment is completely ignorant, even stupid. That just derails the discussion.

that is a huge generalisation!

London has the largest fish, meat, and veg markets in the UK (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_markets_in_London#Whol...) sourcing fresh every day

you don't need to right be next to a field to have fresh produce every day and yes, there are plenty of farms near London

> you don't need to right be next to a field to have fresh produce every day and yes

You kind of have, because frozen produce is not the same as real fresh stuff. Yes, better-off people living in metropolises like London or NYC (like many of the users in here) probably lie to themselves in thinking that their money can purchase better food compared to a peasant in Turkey who lives just between an orchard and the Aegean See, but that is not the case.

What do you imagine does surround London? Empty moors and badlands? Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billingsgate_Fish_Market

Is it fish caught in that same day like you can get in any Greek taverna in the Cyclades? Or frozen fish brought in from half a continent away?

> What do you imagine does surround London?

Suburbia? Is there anything else for a radius of 50-60 km?

You're absolutely mad - this has no relation to reality at all.

> Is it fish caught in that same day like you can get in any Greek taverna in the Cyclades?

The UK has some of the richest fishing waters in the world. We have so much that we export worldwide. Of course it's available in London.

> Suburbia? Is there anything else for a radius of 50-60 km?

How big do you think the suburbs of London are? It's not LA. Draw a 60 km radius circle around London and take a look at the expanse of rural England for yourself.

> I've visited London only once 10 years ago

Clearly.

> Suburbia? Is there anything else for a radius of 50-60 km?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Green_Belt

You can also hit the sea in that distance from London.

Northeast of London you have East Anglia which two of its counties are really only known for their agriculture. Suffolk [1] & Norfolk [2]. Southeast you have the flower garden of Kent [3]. I live Southwest next to a train line called the Watercress Line [4] that was named such as it ferried fresh watercress into London.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffolk#Economy

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norfolk#Economy_and_industry

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watercress_Line

>Is it fish caught in that same day like you can get in any Greek taverna in the Cyclades?

Yes. There's huge amount of fish bought in from inside the UK from Cornwall/Brixham etc etc. Never mind all the stuff that's air freighted here.

>Or frozen fish brought in from half a continent away?

All fish in the EU is frozen anyway [1].

1. https://www.food.gov.uk/business-guidance/freezing-fish-and-...

> Is it fish caught in that same day like you can get in any Greek taverna in the Cyclades?

Yes

>Or frozen fish brought in from half a continent away?

You can get that too.

The negative response you are getting from users is because you are completely wrong about inability to get high quality, same day picked/slaughtered/fished food in London.

edit: in regard to frozen fish, I trust that the Japanese (who regularly freeze the absolutely highest grade Tuna during transit) know what they are doing.

Dining and sleeper cars are pretty ubiquitous, see https://journeybeyondrail.com.au/guest-information/food-beve... or https://dereklow.co/across-the-usa-by-train-for-just-213/.

For me, standing up is what makes the travelling pub most interesting - how did passengers avoid spilling their beers?

This looks really awesome and the pricing is quite reasonable.

I always wanted to do a train tour but somehow the Transsib did not interest me so much. India is a much more intriguing country for me.

I've put it on my list! Thank you :)

For nearly $7,000 USD for 1 person for a 3 day trip in the cheapest room, I'd want a lot more than "better than pub food" and wifi in the desert.

i think your pricing is off - https://www.maharajas-express-india.com/fare.html

I quoted the single pricing which includes the Single Supplement. Traveling solo is only slightly less than the price for 2 people.

Looks nice, but I'd prefer a train where the view out the window isn't blocked by some guy hanging on to the outside of the train ;)

You will find that easily on the trans-siberian it'll take you to Siberia.

British Rail was the name of the railnetwork in the UK before it got privatised and split up (many still don't think that was a good thing either).

Was before my time and I do recall the buffett cars and resturant cars and could buy cans of alcohol.

Though in many parts (whole London area for sure) you are now not allowed to drink and it is illegal. Which for many, disagree with. Though you are not allowed to smoke on the platforms at stations either, which is a good thing IMHO - though it was darn handy to work out were to stand at a station so when the train stopped you would be near the doors to embark as you could see the grouping of cigarette butts grouping on the tracks near the door hotspots.

Would this work today - nope as in many of the routes, they can't even provide enough seats and often see services that are the polar opposite of what we class as social distancing by today's standards. Indeed, the game sardines would be a step-up on space for many services.

Alas rail - least in the UK, is expensive, crowded and sad when you can get a return flight from London to Scotland for less than a single ticket from London to Birmingham - much less alas and also quicker.

You are absolutely allowed to drink on long-distance trains (West Coast and East Coast mainlines, the lines out to Norwich, Cornwall, etc.), and in fact on a weekday service travelling first class, there is complimentary alcohol. I was having a glass of wine on the train just a couple of months ago.

Commuter services are very different - and yes, this wouldn't work on those routes today.

Good to hear you can still drink on long-distance trains, alas not so in London area https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press-releases/2008/may/al...

What with TFL gradually expanding, one does wonder what the future does hold.

The ban applies to services operated by TfL - the underground, buses, trams, the Overground, and the DLR.

But it doesn't apply to train services within London operated by train companies. You can get on the train at Finsbury Park, crack open a can, and enjoy it on the way into Moorgate.

Well I can get a train from Waterloo out to Chessington and can't drink upon that. :(

In short, if you can pay by Oyster - your can't drink and ride. Unless of course you're an MP and then apparently you just do it and play down any drama and no fines at all.

I don't think this is true, but i could be wrong. What is your basis for thinking you can't drink on that train?

The law, announcements on those trains, as said, anything that TFL touch's and with that, if you can pay for or use that train with an Oyster card, you not going to be drinking without risk of a large fine.

So based on experience, other experiences and laws.

Also note many companies run dry-trains, so with that, can't drink or carry(questionable as long as sealed and not been open you can afaik).

https://www.drinkaware.co.uk/alcohol-facts/alcohol-and-the-l...

What law? I've never heard of any connection between being able to pay with Oyster and not being able to drink - this sounds like an old wives' tale to me.

I know there are specific trains where drinking is banned. Elsewhere in this thread, there are some examples in Wales. I can't find anything about it being banned on trains to Chessington, or anywhere on South Western Railway, though. Not can their help person on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/SW_Help/status/1250795304837951490?s=19

The link you cite clearly says the ban is only for trains operated by TfL, and occasional trains such as ones to football matches.

Rather than doubling down on your argument, accept you are wrong and move on.

> In short, if you can pay by Oyster - your can't drink and ride.

This is wrong. You can pay with an Oyster for Thameslink services out of and through London for example and drink on those. It literally only applies to Tfl operated services.

Well I do know that Stagecoach or whoever runs the train I catch out of London into the suburbs of Surrey DO NOT allow drinking.

Had a check on thamelink and darn - lucky you https://twitter.com/tlrailuk/status/1078740639674744834?lang...

Just don't move to the otherside of London if you like a drink.

Here in the US, Metro-North (one of the 3 major NYC-area commuter rail systems) was running bar cars until 2014.

You can bring your own alcohol on all 3 of the NYC-area commuter rail systems and drink if you want with the exception of some of late night hours/major drinking holidays.

> British Rail was the name of the railnetwork in the UK before it got privatised and split up (many still don't think that was a good thing either).

Note that rail in the UK has effectively been taken back into public ownership due to the coronavirus crisis (it's being run by the private companies still, but for a set fee determined by government - they're not getting any of the money from ticket sales). And it's widely suspected that it won't return to the previous franchise model when the crisis is over (as there was a recent government report recommending this, and apparently there were already plans in the works to shake things up).

"Public" and "Private" don't magically fix all our rail issues. The Government knows this.

We really must ask more of our politicians than just headline statements.

It's eminently possible that the Gov's idea of an alternative to the private franchise model will be much worse.

> Though in many parts (whole London area for sure) you are now not allowed to drink and it is illegal.

You can drink on the rail network through most of the country. Most of the longer distance trains either have a drinks/snacks hatch or a trolley that goes up and down the train selling drinks and snacks.

I agree the service is in a pretty dire state and crazy expensive.

I find it surprising that a country as geographically small as the UK wouldn’t find a way to make rail more attractive than flying.

You don't need to be surprised -- rail is more widely used than domestic air travel. (Reminder: regular express services run at up to 125mph; the HS1 -- Channel tunnel -- route maxes out at 180mph, and the HS2 line in development is due to hit 220mph eventually. This isn't Amtrak!)

The real competition for trains is automobiles and coaches, due to road-building having been prioritized since the 1950s. Also, rail fares have risen faster than inflation ever since privatization, and the surplus were siphoned off to the private-sector owners rather than being reinvested in modernization. Hence the current poor state of affairs.

This is right. Generally, rail dominates air for journeys of up to three hours, and is competitive up to about 5. Many of the domestic air routes (and closer international routes like London to Paris) are really only for people connecting onto long-distance flights rather than a popular way of going city-to-city. The more general-purpose flights are either longer (London to Scotland, or Exeter to the North) or over water (mainland to NI, for example).

The main competition for medium-distance routes is absolutely road, which has the majority share (cheaper, but normally slower on the main intercity trunks).

>the private-sector owners

Many of the train operating companies are in fact owned by foreign governments. Abellio is Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Arriva is Deutsche Bahn, Govia is SNCF.

The countries where rail transport is competitive with air transport (France, Japan) have high-speed rail that is separate from regional lines.

I've travelled by train in the UK since the early 80s and it's far worse now. Feet on seats, bags on seats, people talking on phones using speakerphone, watching videos without headphones, dreadful music leaking out of headphones, eating smelly food, failing to discipline riotous children, overcrowding. The sad truth is that unless you really enjoy environmentalist self-flagellation, car or plane are infinitely more preferable.

Changing this would need to start with a cultural change, but the traditional values we'd need to go back to are out of fashion.

100% disagree with this. Our local line, which in the 80s was a backwater being considered for closure or at the least major service cuts, now has an hourly fast intercity train with a quiet carriage (mostly observed), decent free wifi, and reliable service. Driving and, more significantly, parking anywhere just can't compete.

Not everywhere in the UK is lucky enough to have a good train service, but overall the service today is much better than the 80s.

Is that representative of most journeys? I suspect not. Apart from that I'd argue that the stubborn popularity of cars tells its own story.

Well, I've also been travelling on trains since the early 1980s and I don't really recognise that at all - are you in the South East?

I'd actually say my normal commute into Edinburgh from Fife is actually quite enjoyable - getting a seat isn't a problem in the mornings and maybe once a month I have to stand for 10 minutes on the train coming back, which is hardly an ordeal. Fellow passengers all seem fairly pleasant as well!

I would say that 95% of my train travel has been between Edinburgh, Glasgow and up to Inverness and beyond.

I am in the southeast, and I identify more with your description than with the grandparent.

The only thing I miss about trains in the 1980s is that for a while the line between Aberdeen and Inverness ran ancient old 1st class carriages with compartments (think Harry Potter) as standard.

Try Blackfriars to Brighton for an eye opener.

> Though in many parts (whole London area for sure) you are now not allowed to drink and it is illegal

Only TfL it seems. I've been on a London-Doncaster train and was served alcohol before we even left King's Cross (complementary - it was only about £2 more for a first class ticket - and the train was barely even moving before they started serving).

>Though in many parts (whole London area for sure) you are now not allowed to drink and it is illegal.

Not the case, only on TfL services. Commuter trains you can if you like.

The 4th and 14th bar wagons in the french TGV (high-speed train) are such a bonus compared to planes (for national trips) and the car !

Yes, and the Swiss restaurant cars are even nicer in the long distance trains. I often end up eating or at least having a drink when I travel with them.

Cool what makes them nicer ? Luxury ? The new TGVs have some seats.

Tables with seats and white table linen and at table service. Better food options than TGV Lyria which I have recent experience with.

This is still a thing!

In Hampshire (UK) you can catch the Real Ale Train (RAT)[1] - an old fashioned steam train which potters up and down a few miles of track, serving beer from local breweries, via an on-board bar. It stops at various stations which have been preserved as they would have been in the 1950s.

You don't actually go anywhere, but the experience of quaffing ale with friends whilst watching the world go by on a balmy summer's evening is amazing.

[1] https://www.watercressline.co.uk/product.php/139/real-ale-tr...

Helsinki, Finland has a pub tram that does the rounds occasionally: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sp%C3%A5raKoff

There is also a pub tram here in Brno in Czech Republic:

https://www.salina-pub.cz/

It is on a regular schedule in the evening - well, when a pandemic is not going on.

We have the cider express in Frankfurt/Main, Germany: https://www.ebbelwei-express.de/en/

I was going to mention that! Despite living here for four years I've still not taken the time to have a ride on it, but I should certainly do so this year.

USA and Canada had the "bar car" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_car

When I was growing up in Germany we had the Skiexpress that would go to the slopes in the Alps. On the way back there was the "Discocar" with dance music, drinks, strobe lights and disco ball. Good memories.

British trains are already pretty boozy places, not sure we need more people getting drunk and rowdy. Probably makes sense in first class though.

When I moved to Germany, I was immediately impressed with its train/rail systems.

It was delightful to take a day and visit the Schweberbahn of Wuppertal, a hanging rail system that has resisted modernity for more than a hundred years. It is a delightful, little trip, even if it took all day to drive to Wuppertal to try it out.

And then there was the time I got on the wrong train to Munich, from Dusseldorf, ended up in Hamburg, and had to take the night train across the country. The DB booze wagon was a veritable club, replete with a DJ and plenty of grog to keep the conundrums away. The fresh air out the window, somewhere in the middle of German Greenland, at 3am in the morning - this was a safe, adventurous drinking session. Thank goodness for 'die Kabine', lock and key and all.

A Friday afternoon jaunt from the Rührgebiet to Amsterdam Central - not the best food by far, but a restaurant on the way, nevertheless, to finer treats.

I came to believe that Americans, for all their faults, could not be forgiven for adopting the freeway instead of the railway as their most virulent expressions of freedom. Nothing quite like spending the badly needed 3 hours before a meeting, staring out at the landscape slinging by, while your presentation is uploaded in comfort and class ..

Reply on news.ycombinator.com