The club trains were initially provided by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway and the London North Western Railway to carry businessmen commuters to their office jobs and back - to Blackpool, Southport, Windermere and Llandudno. They each provided a special saloon carriage that offered comfort and privacy for those paying a supplement to join the club. They continued to operate under the London Midland and Scottish Railway between the wars, but were discontinued during World War Two and not resurrected after it.
However, the fast, early trains and their return workings would have still carried on into British Railways days and its not difficult to imagine that the club mentality [especially for those who were “in the know”] lived on amongst many of the commuters whose lengthy daily journeys were the cost of working in the big city and living by the sea, much as it does in many other parts of the country today.
John Harrison’s atmospheric watercolour painting of the North Wales Club Train shows the southbound evening train heading back to North Wales through Warrington Bank Quay behind a Black Five. She would only be on the west coast main line for a short time before taking the Chester line south of the town.
Warrington BQ was one of the first locations we visited with our school railway society, probably in late 1960. We walked up the approach road from Warrington Central to see 46223 Princess Alice at the head of an express for the north. The club train would have already passed through without stopping by then and we would have left for home and our tea before she returned.
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