A Century of Railway Travel by Atterbury Paul

Author:Atterbury, Paul
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: A Century of Railway Travel
ISBN: 9780747813736
Publisher: Osprey Publishing Ltd

Tavern Car

1949

The first restaurant car was introduced in 1879 and by 1900 restaurant and bar cars, with supporting kitchen cars, were in regular use all over the British network. From the Edwardian era, dining on trains became increasingly fashionable, and restaurant cars reflected contemporary interior design styles, influenced by competition between the various railway companies. Initially, French styles dominated but by the 1930s streamlined Art Deco modernism was all the rage. At the same time, dining became less formal, encouraging the development of buffet and bar cars whose styling tended to echo fashionable hotels.

During the late 1940s the newly nationalised British Railways worked hard to improve both its services and its image. New locomotives and rolling stock replaced those worn out by the heavy years of wartime service, and these included a new generation of restaurant, bar and sleeping cars. One of the innovations was the so-called ‘tavern car’ of 1949, introduced on Southern and Eastern Regions to try to bring the informality of the pub onto the train. Here, women in ‘New Look’ suits try out this strange timber-framed, leaded glass and pub décor look, a short-lived attempt at combining the traditional tavern with modern buffet car features.

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