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Sexual assault, chamber-pot etiquette, and other problems of early rail travel

Simon Bradley’s celebration of the network is likely to become a classic of social history — vivid, authoritative but never trainspotterish

19 September 2015

8:00 AM

19 September 2015

8:00 AM

The Railways: Nation, Network and People Simon Bradley

Profile, pp.645, £25, ISBN: 9781846682094

Simon Bradley dates the demise of the on-board meal service to 1962, when Pullman services no longer offered croutons with the soup course. That may be a touch fanciful— there were other reasons for the decline, such as faster trains, cost cutting and the growth of fast food. Nevertheless, it is the type of anecdote that illustrates the thoroughness and depth of Bradley’s research.

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