The Station Buffet Part Four

             In 1953 the Transport Act abolished the Railway Executive and brought hotel, train and station catering together as British Transport Hotels and Catering Services. By 1963, British Transport Hotels had become part of the new British Railways Board, within which the Head of British Rail Catering reported to the Hotels General Manager. In 1966, that post was changed to General Manager of British Rail Catering. In 1973, British Rail Catering became Travellers’ Fare, which was given responsibility for all catering on trains and stations. In 1978, Travellers’ Fare acquired its own board, independent of hotels, before becoming a separate division of the British Railways Board in 1982.

The closure of unattractive old-fashioned and unprofitable dining rooms and buffets continued throughout the post-war period. Between late 1954 and Easter 1966, 100 were closed, whilst at the same time lets to private tenants continued. Travellers’ Fare realised a need to market railway catering more pro-actively. With a £5m grant for renovation, it turned to bistros, real ale outlets, off-licenses, grocery shops and themed local identity names for buffets, which were then backed up by changed interior designs. Local manager input was encouraged but initiatives were held back where buffets were on island platforms and footfall was less, or the station itself was a long way out of the centre of town, when compared to those either facing a concourse or opening onto the street outside. Restrictive licensing laws were also still a hinderance.

Mini-buffets were introduced in 1980 in the form of trolleys that were wheeled down the train carrying stock that the station refreshment rooms had supplied. These were largely used on extra summer holiday trains where it was uneconomic to provide buffet cars for the limited number of days in the year that these trains ran. The use of vending machines on platforms continued to spread more widely.

Some grand, old, original refreshment rooms benefited from a facelift, including London Marylebone, Manchester Victoria and Carlisle’s island platform. Casey Jones became the first in-house fast-food chain. Quicksnacks coffee shops (as at Café Victoria), Station Taverns and Food Courts were developed, where take-away outlets surrounded spacious central eating areas. Travellers’ Fare ceded a succession of small station buffets to private tenants, some gaining their own reputation, as at Manningtree and Stalybridge. “Railway stations today offer without doubt a better selection of food and drink than ever before,” concluded former rail catering insider, Neil Wooler, who documented many of these changes in his book, Dinner in the Diner, in 1987.

Throughout the 1980s, railway station catering was increasingly run by the private sector, in preparation for rail privatisation. Travellers’ Fare Ltd was secured by a management buyout team in 1988 and sold to the Compass Group in 1992. They merged it with their other interests to form Select Service Partner. In 1997, SSP stopped trading as Travellers’ Fare, and in 2006, Compass sold the business to two consortia led by the Swedish private equity firm, EQT Partners and Macquarie Bank.

The refreshment room in the former signalbox on the down platform at Bodmin Parkway