Holiday Trains

Though railways didn’t create the concept of mass holiday transit—that prize goes to the steamships that preceded them—they helped build up many of Britain’s favorite seaside resorts. Holiday Trains plots this development, paying visits to Blackpool, Margate, Southport and Weston-super-Mare, while paying respect to the other sorts of holiday the railways helped or made possible. But the role of the railways in the Great British holiday was not confined to transporting holidaymakers to the coast. Rambling and cycling grew in popularity between 1870 and 1914, many companies aiding both, while they contributed to the camping craze by providing special ‘camping coaches’ on sidings or lengths of track in rural station yards. After World War I, the cost of motoring came down enough, and the use of motor coaches grew enough to erode the railways’ share of the market, although it was really the rise of cheaper air fares in the 1960s that started the inexorable decline in holiday rail travel. This book considers all these changes, but ends by looking at the holiday trains that can still be caught today.