Unusual Railway Pubs, Refreshment Rooms and Ale Trains

Queen Victoria¿s private waiting room; the setting for the film classic Brief Encounter;a Lincolnshire signal cabin; a pre-war parcels van; a gas-lit ladies¿ waiting room; anda wooden carriage of 1876... some of the locations that serve as station pubs with adifference. You can, quite literally, drink in Britain¿s railway history (and dine too) in theworld¿s first purpose-built railwayman¿s inn, or the Metropolitan Railway¿s headquarters,or the terminus of the late lamented Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway. Theauthor, Bob Barton, has spent five years visiting remarkable hostelries where caskale and coffee is served along with generous portions of railway heritage and nowyou can too, with the help of this lavishly illustrated guide.Stations both large and small once had licensed refreshment rooms of the typeimmortalized in Noel Coward¿s Brief Encounter. During the nineteenth century, a newgeneration of railway pubs on and adjacent to stations became the successors tocoaching inns, for which the railways had sounded the death-knell. Bob Barton tracesthe 175 year-old relationship between railways, refreshment rooms and the brewingindustry through this guide covering everything from main line termini to rural branchline halts. It includes the growing phenomenon of steam hauled Ale Trains onheritage railways, and features reproductions of pump-clips of railway themed beers.The book will appeal to railway enthusiasts as well as both armchair and actualtravellers (the places featured can all be visited, most of them by train as well as bycar) in addition to real ale lovers and those who like their nostalgia infused with thesight or spirit of steam trains.