British Rail’s short experiment with travelling pubs (2020) | Hacker News Reader

British Rail’s short experiment with travelling pubs (2020)

ianvisits.co.uk

91 pointszeristor76 comments

A funny story that's vaguely related - Here in Ireland, alcohol sales were prohibited on Good Friday until surprisingly recently. But there were some exceptions, and one of those was travelling.

I've heard stories of people buying a ticket to the next town so they could park themselves in the Station Bar for the afternoon. And the lockdown equivalent - a budget flight so you have similar free rein of the airport for the day.

edit: the quote “nobody likes them except the public and the public have flocked to them” rings awfully familiar around here.

This is still the case. I was getting an early train at around 7.30 one Saturday, and there were a bunch of people drinking in the train station. The staff member told me they were regulars. For context, most pubs won't open till 10.30am or later.

The Long Island Railroad (Metro NY commuter rail) used to operate a bar car on the rush hour trains, as did Metro North. Discontinued years ago. Sorry for the Pintrest link, couldn't find a better photo resource quickly.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/31032684922734675/

https://www.city-data.com/forum/long-island/885214-lirr-bar-...

https://untappedcities.com/2020/02/06/when-metro-north-had-a...

As far as I know Amtrak still sells beer. They even have some decent regional beers.

The Downeaster has some very choice Portland (ME) brews

The Amtrak Cascades certainly did at least before Covid. The pricing was pretty close to stadium prices but they had a good selection of local beers.

Stella Artois, Deschutes porter, Elysian Space Dust IPA, and Rambling Route cider for $7.50 as of October: https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/p...

Yep. I recall that the pricing was such that buying Arrogant Bastard from Stone wasn’t that bad a deal.

https://www.pacificsurfliner.com/globalassets/pdfs/2019_mark...

The submission isn't just about selling beer, any line with a trolley service (which isn't all admittedly, the one I'm most familiar with used the pandemic to stop and isn't coming back) sells beer. I'm sure the buffet carriages sold it too, (are there any still? ECML maybe?) I was too young to care to know. It's about having a car laid out as if a pub, a 'bar' if you like, vs. an off-licence selling it among other things for consumption in your seat.

Yes the Virgin trains that do the Manchester to London route all have buffet carriages where you can buy beers and wines, they have a few standing tables too so you can even stop and drink in the buffet carriage or return to your seat.

But obviously not in the same league as this pub carriage.

I don’t think they’ve had the standing tables since Avanti took over at the end of 2019?

I was on the Northeast Regional last September and can confirm, halfway decent beer selection. They had wine as well, not sure what the selection was like, and not sure about spirits.

The Metro North New Haven line had them until 2014.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/today-last-call-me...

Dunno why they got rid of it. Always used to be a rowdy time in there.

More recently, these Class 442 trains had a pub-like “snug” area:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/rpmarks/8211495519

(The trains were scrapped last year to some dismay - they were the pinnacle of commuter comfort in their day.)

It's sad that long-distance trains are moving to an aeroplane-like food service.

Standing up and walking several carriages to the bar buy an overpriced might be less efficient than than having it delivered to your seat, but it feels so much better.

Long distance trains in Germany have a restaurant wagon that serves beer and wine. Really nice on long journeys to have the option to go there. Good trick if the train is full and you have no reservation to head straight there and just hang out there. It's one of those things that just works without escalating in Germany. I've never really seen people get really drunk there. It's mostly just people having a couple of beverages with their food.

As a tourist, despite the pretty poor food I love the novelty of the DBahn restaurant carts. Something about having a sit down meal whistling along silently through the countryside at 200kph just seems cool.

Yeah the restaurant car is a great choice, there's something really lovely about chilling out with friends and a beer while the European countryside whizzes past.

In the UK I think the Pullman carriage still operates mon-fri 6pm leaving Paddington travelling west. Silver service dining, and is pretty good fun.

Same in Poland. Unfortunately, getting a table is far from guaranteed, because lots of people just hoard it for the duration of their entire journey.

Switzerland also. Although you can also just BYO and drink anywhere on the train.

Reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLF7yife8YE&vl=en -- "My Unlicensed Hovercraft Pub Is Technically Legal"

Forgive me for being negative, but it doesn't seem to me that anything that faces the public in the UK is allowed to be nice any more. Lack of funding, overzealous safety and cost regimes, plus hooligans who will deface anything, and you have a country where everything has to be made industrial-ugly, if even made at all these days. (except for private office buildings for finance people)

I do know what you mean. Everything's designed to not get damaged and not cause anyone to get sued these days. Victorian buildings and vehicles on the other hand, just seem to look gorgeous by default.

> Victorian buildings and vehicles on the other hand, just seem to look gorgeous by default.

Even a sewage pumping station:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Abbey_Mills_Pumping_Stati...

vs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:New_abbey_mills_pumping_s...

I know what you mean, I used to think about this as I went through the Elan Valley quite often. The Victorians dammed the valley to supply water to Birmingham and even though being in a rural part of Wales few people would see them compared to most industrial constructions they put real effort into the aesthetics and made them look stunning. If we were damming a valley today we'd build some hideous concrete monolith and call it a day without even putting a nice facade over it.

It sounds true, but I'd be wary of selection bias (ugly and shoddy Victorian buildings got demolished and replaced) and glorification of old (lots of Victorian terrace houses just seem "quaint" nowadays but would not be acceptable newly built). Plus there are some good counter examples I think, Elizabeth line or Battersea reconstruction come to mind.

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

https://www.salina-pub.cz/ (CZ)

It has been traveling the Brno tram network in the evenings since 2013.

There is a pub-tram in Helsinki too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sp%C3%A5raKoff

It makes an appearance in this video if you seek to the appropriate section:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jF45gG2C3IY

The long-distance trains say they have a selection of craft beer in the restaurant cars: https://www.vr.fi/en/facilities-and-services/restaurant-car

Some check-ins: https://untappd.com/v/ravintolavaunu/1472247

It is kinda fun, I took it to přehrada for ignis brunensis one summer, unfortunately it sells Starobrno :D That said, they do a nefiltr 12° now that's pretty drinkable

Imagine knocking off for the day, rolling into your favourite post-work boozer, having pints with your mates for a couple of hours and then it drops you home as you finish. Talk about efficiency!

This could totally help ease the housing crisis in London if spun the right way. I’m sure of it!

The problem is that the Brits are notoriously bad a moderation with alcohol (I am British) which leads to lots of social problems both on the train itself and at the stations you alight late at night.

Alcohol is already a problem on most night-time train services and if anything, the operators are more likely to ban it than encourage it (I think some already ban drunk people getting on the train in the first place)

Alcohol is completely banned on the Scottish rail network:

https://www.scotrail.co.uk/about-scotrail/our-rules-travel/a...

Only on ScotRail trains, which largely operate with Scotland. However the ban doesn't extend to services that operate across the border. Yet another minor pleasure ruined by an overbearing Scottish government driven by a handful of idiots.

I travelled recently on a smallish Scotrail train to Edinburgh on a Friday evening. On the table next to me were a couple in their 50s who brought out a red-white checkered table cloth and crystal wine glasses, like a posh picnic. With inimitable style they mixed lemon Fanta with Gordons Gin in their crystal glasses, but wisely kept the Gordons in their bag to avoid too much provocation. They behaved well, just their faces started to colour-match their table cloth by the time they got to Edinburgh. The conductor did not mind. If anything, I think he was a bit jealous.

(This train terminated in Edinburgh and was going no-where the English border)

It's banned on all Transport for London services as well, courtesy of one mayor B. Johnson

You can drink and get away with it, the ban kind of serves as a deterrent for bad behaviour and gives guards/police an easy way to get rid of people being drunk pricks (which is not technically illegal)

You just described Germany.

Next: an 80's office on rails: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HbrI3refig (first ~5minutes).

Here's [1] a picture of the conference room on an Italian high speed train.

I've seen similar rooms/compartments on other trains, but I can't remember which and can't find any more examples.

[1] https://www.seat61.com/trains-and-routes/frecciarossa.htm

I scrolled through the page you linked but I don’t see whatever image you’re referring to

Search for "Executive class meeting room".

In the YouTube video the presenter says that the train has 4 phone lines, hah, nowadays a businessperson might have a mobile phone and a data SIM for her laptop...

I think some German trains have them too?

"Mock tudor" is an abomination. Fake lead-paned windows? Fake beams that are too low, so people bump their heads?

There are some old country pubs with low ceilings and beams; but they're low because back in the day, people were shorter. So you see beams labelled "Duck or grouse". It's mad that they chose to emulate in a moving train a dangerous mis-feature of old pubs.

Phonyness all is phony, to misquote The Zim.

FYI for Bay Area residents: Caltrain allows open containers on rides. BYOB though.

I love that, especially when the giants are playing and tons of people are having a good time when you are on your way home from work. Also funny when they exit in the city and the police immediately greets them and makes them throw away any leftovers ;)

They are prohibited after a certain hour (10p? idk) and after events, such as sports games.

If you're grabbing one for a commute, it's totally fine though!

I dunno why but for some reason Trains and alcohol go well together. I'd usually get a beer for my train ride for visits home from Edinburgh and Montrose (<2 hrs) as a student

Tom Driberg, the MP mentioned in the article was a very very interesting character. And, was fond of a drop or two. So his objections were to the thing being faux mock-tudor (faux-mock because mock-tudor is a defined style, this was a fake of a fake) not that it existed at all, in my view.

He was a communist, a homosexual, he was a gossip columnist journalist, had reported in the spanish civil war and munich, Was accused by a right wing columnist as a soviet spy.. And still had time to complain about British Rail making a pub on wheels.

I mean, from what I know about the gay communists, they love to complain about the misuse of trains.

Thanks for the highlight on the man though, he seems like somebody to read up on!

The entire cohort of labour post war was fascinating. Soldier citizens, mixing with professional parliamentarians, social activists, renegade upper classes, soviet supports/opponents.. gays, you name it.

At one point, MI5 was bugging some of them (illegally) and they started using Yiddish as an attempted code to avoid being understood. I think their assumption this was "Navaho code-talker smart" was misplaced, there would be plenty of Yiddish speakers in the espiocrat community.

When I say "was a gossip columnist" I'm playing him down. He was the man behind the Daily Express's "William Hickey". He kind-of defined that decades voice.

This was the cohort who built the welfare state. Jokes aside, it was amazing what they achieved against the reaction from Churchill and his followers.

I would have loved something like this that helped ease the boredom of commuting. I could imagine actually looking forward to getting on the train and interacting with fellow passengers in the bar rather than just seeing the same people for years and never acknowledging them

There are stories of commuters learning a language together on the same commute. It is a weird situation to be in sitting next to the same people every day, the only chance to make conversation being if there is a problem in the service and you have to work out how to use the buses.

Working from home though has almost completely unraveled that.

One of my first great experiences in Germany was getting on the train in Düsseldorf on the way to Berlin, and finding myself in the Bar cabin, where I could order as much alcohol as I wanted. Later in the ride, the cabin was converted into a club/disco and it was awesome.

Sometimes it feels like Germans know a freedom not well expressed elsewhere in the Western world ..

Vaguely reminds me of this: https://www.thedrive.com/news/38221/the-mctrain-the-rise-and...

Reminds me of The Titfield Thunderbolt

good cheerful movie and they had a bar wagon there as well

trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYvt8Dqjdvk

The Hague has a fine dining restaurant in a (functional, moving) tram: https://www.hoftrammm.nl/en

It seems this was posted 3 years ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22863636

The first class carriage between Bristol and London served free sandwiches, fruit, papers - and wine on a Friday evening. How civilised it was sitting amongst judges and bankers with my discount short haul ticket with a pocket full of free food and a gratis glass of plonk to console me when I got to Reading and the interminable wait for the Blackwater line

I’m not sure if it has a pub name, perhaps: Ye Olde Snowpiercer

My only idea is that glass-topped tables seem to be too slippery for a moving train. Imagine when you spill the liquor on the table.

Is it like when you spill liquor on a moving planet?

Yes. When the planet brakes and accelerates, all the liquid sloshes about.

There's a Koff branded red bar-tram roaming around Helsinki. It is also available for rent.

The golden age, before everything had to be privatised and run into the ground.

This was an experiment from 1949, the privatization of the railways started in 1994. They really have nothing to do with each other in this case.

Well, except that one happened in a time before the other, which was jossclimb's point, I believe.

The experiment ended decades before privatization, they are completely unrelated.

Except that the experiment happened before privatisation, rather than after, which is the point, I think?

I blame the Oxygen catastrophe myself.

FWIW gross ridership numbers suggest it was an era of slow decline, until it got privatised and the number of passengers skyrocketed https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GBR_rail_passenger...

The (2020) in the title is a bit misleading..

how come?

the article itself was from 2020, although the pub train is dated as 1949, I took the date of the article to be the date to use when I submitted it.

Good point though, like the finger pointing at the Moon. Is it the finger or the Moon that is the important thing.

The Roads Must Roll.

DO NOT GIVE THE WEATHERSPOONS GUY IDEAS.

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