"The wrong kind of sandwiches..."

[Pete]

Apparently, they're loading down trains and making them go too slowly.

What excuse will they dream up next? 

[juliet]

Bah, I hate trolley services.  They get horribly in the way.  Buffet cars much better. 

[Charlotte]

Train food is foul.  Train trolly food is even fouler.

Trains are becoming more and more like Squeezyjet anyway - this is just one more step towards the orange horror.

[pcolbeck]

Charlotte you are obviously too young to remember the horror that was BR catering. I have been travelling up and down to London on the train for 20 years and one of the things that's improved drastically over that time is the quality of the sandwiches. You can get a decent free range egg and cress and a good packet of crisps on most main line trains these days. It's expensive but at least its edible.

[Charlotte]

Not like this then?

[pcolbeck]

 

[Pete]

In fact it must be years since I last sampled British Rail on-train catering, mainly because, here on the glorious Southern Region, buffet cars, like the old Pullmans, have gone the way of the dodo.  But I remember a bit of warmed-up plastic, posing as a (veggie) hot meal, once.  The vilest thing that ever passed my lips...

[pcolbeck]

Stick with the sandwiches. Apparently the proper catering in first class is very good though.

[mike]

I went on a coporate jollie on the Orient Express once.  Silver service, great food and an awful lot of champagne - for breakfast

All paid for by good old Marconi.  Lovely people [some of them] but no idea how to run a company...

[Elleigh]

I went on a coporate jollie on the Orient Express once.  Silver service, great food and an awful lot of champagne - for breakfast

All paid for by good old Marconi.  Lovely people [some of them] but no idea how to run a company...

My honeymoon for my first wedding which never happened (there has since been other wedding that didn't happen) was going to be on the Orient Express!  It was an amazing experience, or so my ex told me.  He took the honeymoon with the woman he cheated on me with and left me for!

Shame they didn't serve them Charlotte's sandwhich. It would have served them right!

[Hot Flatus]

I much prefer the asian idea of train food. Leaning out of the windows at stops and bartering with people holding edible things on sticks 

[pcolbeck]

I much prefer the asian idea of train food. Leaning out of the windows at stops and bartering with people holding edible things on sticks 

You might starve on a modern mainline British train. Non of the windows open

[spen666]

from the BBC Story

Of all the things that hold up First Great Western trains buffet cars are the least of their concerns," said Alex Gordon of the RMT.

"We've heard about points failures, about leaves on the line, signal failures and broken trains but really blaming it on the sandwiches just takes the biscuit," he added.

Did he really mean to say that?

[bomber]

There was a travelling chef or whatever they call it on the FGW train I took on tuesday.  Had a bacon baguettte cooked while I waited, was rather nice.  I never have a problem paying inflated prices, since the train fair is totally free for me anyway.

[David Martin]

I much prefer the asian idea of train food. Leaning out of the windows at stops and bartering with people holding edible things on sticks 

You might starve on a modern mainline British train. Non of the windows open

Absolutely wrong. You need to open the windows to open the doors.

..d

[bomber]

I much prefer the asian idea of train food. Leaning out of the windows at stops and bartering with people holding edible things on sticks 

You might starve on a modern mainline British train. Non of the windows open

Absolutely wrong. You need to open the windows to open the doors.

..d

Only on the HSTs.  Anything newer seems to lack opening windows.

[scott]

I much prefer the asian idea of train food. Leaning out of the windows at stops and bartering with people holding edible things on sticks 

Or, closer to home, getting lunch from the Italians at the Swiss border stop wandering up and down shouting "panini!"

[Jaded]

The First Class food is pretty good on the Pendelinos. Not all the FGW services do hot food in the restaurant.

Best food I ever had on a train was on the Blue Train. Proper 9 course meal with fine wines.

[rower40]

I've just read an announcement that East Midlands Trains are not, after all, stopping the Full English Breakfast in first class on their prime morning services.  They had planned to change to reheated-food only - the breakfast is cooked on board in a very small kitchen by a very small chef.

It's an experience to be savoured; listening to your arteries clogging at 110 mph, while overtaking all the 5-seats-1-occupant metal boxes on the M1.

[Pete]

I have never travelled first-class  .  Clearly I have missed out on much in my life  .  But I do remember savouring the early-style buffets that occasionally occurred on the trains I used to ride in my schooldays (trains looking like this IIRC).  My meagre pocket money wouldn't stretch to more than a Penguin, which would cost me the princely sum of 4^d (as compared to 3^d in the school tuck-shop).  Ahhhh......(*wave of nostalgia*)....

[Flying_Monkey]

It annoys me that this company thinks that people are so stupid that they will actually buy this excuse for cost savings through sacking their train staff (which is what it is...). 

[alan]

 on the Orient Express!  It was an amazing experience, or so my ex told me.  He took the honeymoon with the woman he cheated on me with and left me for!

 I am going to make a face-value judgement here:it may be the wrong thing to do but...
If there was only two tw8ts in the world that bloke would be both of them

[Regulator]

I used to love getting the early morning train from London to Norwich, when it was run by Great Eastern.

The train had a proper dining car, where standard class mixed with First Class (much to their chagrin) for breakfast.  You paid about £11 and you got a cooked breakfast of gargantuan proportions (with some of the nicest sausages and bacon I've tasted), with good coffee flowing freely.  You could eat as much as you liked - the waiter constantly hovered to offer more eggs, bacon, sausages, mushrooms etc.

There seemed to always be one of the same two couples running the show, no matter which train you were on.  One couple were two old queens (one cooking and one serving) who constantly bickered and were an endless source of amusement for all diners, or a lady of advanced years and her male cook, where it was like being fussed over by your mum.

Now, you're lucky if you can purchase some cardboard and gristle that's been nuked in a microwave - and the coffee is shit!   

[juliet]

I travelled first class on Virgin recently (at the time I bought the ticket it was cheaper than the cheapest standard class due to some complication in their advanced-fares system), & the jacket potato I got was *lovely*.  Also free.  And they kept giving me boozes!

[Pancho]

The best UK rail-bourne food IME is GNER's dining car; particularly breakfast.

Last time I ate on the train (pre demise of GNER), it rated as one of the best breakfasts I've ever had.

Eurostar is a tad disappointing; airline style reheating rather than cooking. But they do chuck as much free booze at you as you can possible ask for.