Dealing with stranded Excursion Train Passengers

[Springs Branch]

Here’s a question which maybe nobody can answer, unless they were caught out in this situation themselves:-

• In the Golden Age of the British seaside, how did the railways deal with excursion passengers who missed their train home and got stranded at the resort?
  
  
• Did this ever happen to you in “the good old days”?

It’s well known that for much of the 20th Century the railways ran a large number of cheap day excursions to the seaside, which attracted people from all walks of life.

All through summer, larger resorts like Blackpool and Skegness would have multiple excursions arriving from many locations, each train bringing in hundreds of people.

In addition to big industrial towns and cities, some of these trains could come from destinations quite far away, or from smaller stations or branch lines which normally had limited or infrequent services.

Obviously the majority of people got back to the station in time – but what happened to the few who missed their excursion train home?

Some might argue that people had more personal responsibility back in those days, so this would not happen. But human nature being what it is, a minority would surely stay too long on the pier, or in the dance halls, amusement arcades or pubs (or simply get lost on the way to the station) and miss their special train.

Given the total number of people travelling, even a small percentage probably meant quite a significant number of people stranded every weekend at the railway stations in Blackpool, Skegness etc. etc.

If you hadn’t already blown all your money, this might just mean an uncomfortable night sleeping rough on a bench (assuming the local police were in a good mood), then an expensive “Anytime Single” back home on the 5am train next morning.

But what if you’d travelled from a fair distance away and didn’t have enough money left for the normal fare? There were no credit cards or cash machines in those days and many people didn’t even have a bank account – you only had whatever cash was left in your pocket.

Neither did most people have telephones, so you couldn’t just phone Mum & Dad to arrange some sort of predecessor to today’s SILK process, or for them to drive the 4x4 to Blackpool in the middle of the night to pick you up.

Did the railways have some process to (eventually) get the drunks and dilatory home?
Say it was during the 1950s – this was well before Duty of Care and Vulnerable Individuals had been invented, but nonetheless would they roster some grumpy, unsympathetic old bloke behind a booking office window to collect names and addresses and issue full-price single tickets on an I.O.U. basis?

 

[camperdown9]

Hi

Interesting question and I don't have an answer.

However I guess if you go back to the 1910's employees had no or very little rights and therefore could be dismissed more of less at the employers whim and without a reference. Being dismissed without a reference could mean starvation. So maybe many people were more aware of there own responsibilities.

In the 1990's I worked for a tour operator and from time to time passengers would miss their return flight back to the UK. This was before the days of Easyjet and Ryanair. In winter from smaller cities charter flights tended to be less frequent. So for example we might of had a once a week Belfast to Tenerife flight. So if a passenger missed their return flight there wouldn't of been another for a week. We did however have an arrangement with other tour operators to help each other out. So if our passenger missed their Tenerife to Belfast flight on a Tuesday and a competitor had seats available into Dublin or Glasgow or Manchester etc they would let us have the seats for free but only when they simply couldn't sell them. So nearly on a standby basis. I wonder did the rail companies have a similar type agreement.

Alex

 

[Taunton]

You would have your excursion train ticket. The platform inspector would endorse it onto regular services, and off you went. Maybe also there were phone messages sent to their inspector colleagues at connection points along the way. Late, but "the railway" got you home.

Funny how we think this is bizarre nowadays.

 

[Bunting14]

You would have your excursion train ticket. The platform inspector would endorse it onto regular services, and off you went. Maybe also there were phone messages sent to their inspector colleagues at connection points along the way. Late, but "the railway" got you home.

Funny how we think this is bizarre nowadays.

Not quite the same but in the days of the footexs I missed one from Paddington to Swansea due to problems on another part of BR. The station ticket office endorsed my ticket to enable me to go on a normal service train.

 

[Calthrop]

Topic-drifting a bit -- but this thread can't help but bring to mind for me, the tale from the nine-day nationwide rail strike in September / October 1919: involving a party of people from Tipton in the Black Country, on holiday in Blackpool, and caught there by the strike's beginning. (A predicament, of course, brought on by circumstances in which they had no hand.) They solved the problem by walking the 113 miles home, over a period of three days. One feels that one thing which people were, about a century ago: is, tougher than now.

 

[CarlSilva]

Sleep on the beach in a deck chair. I worked with a guy who was so poor his annual holday to Blackpool was exactly this. He went there on a coach or a bus from Manchester, took some cans of beer and a coat with him, even though it was summer. he could'nt afford a guest house. Better than no holiday at all though, isn't it.

 

[krus_aragon]

You would have your excursion train ticket. The platform inspector would endorse it onto regular services, and off you went. Maybe also there were phone messages sent to their inspector colleagues at connection points along the way. Late, but "the railway" got you home.

Funny how we think this is bizarre nowadays.

There'd also be overnight mail trains, so less danger of missing the “last train”.

 

[SpacePhoenix]

There'd also be overnight mail trains, so less danger of missing the “last train”.

Unless the mail train had normal carriages as well as mail coaches there's no way they'd be allowed on a mail train

 

[Tim R-T-C]

You would have your excursion train ticket. The platform inspector would endorse it onto regular services, and off you went. Maybe also there were phone messages sent to their inspector colleagues at connection points along the way. Late, but "the railway" got you home.

Funny how we think this is bizarre nowadays.

Perhaps back then people wouldn't think to 'take advantage' and 'miss' their cheap excursion return, to get some more time at the seaside and get a service train home...

Unfortunately a lot of our current system is built around the fact that people will take advantage if they think they can. I could buy the cheapest advance ticket in the middle of the day, 'miss' this train and get a later, peak service if I knew the station staff would just allow travel.

 

[Greenback]

Unless the mail train had normal carriages as well as mail coaches there's no way they'd be allowed on a mail train

TPO's would have been very much off limits to ordinary passengers. Many other overnight trains conveying milk, parcels and newspapers had carriages attached.

People in these parts who are a certain age still talk fondly about the milk train that ran from London via Gloucester overnight. It seems to have provided a convenient service for those who wanted an evening in London, or for those who missed an earlier train.

 

[Calthrop]

There'd also be overnight mail trains, so less danger of missing the “last train”.

Unless the mail train had normal carriages as well as mail coaches there's no way they'd be allowed on a mail train

TPO's would have been very much off limits to ordinary passengers. Many other overnight trains conveying milk, parcels and newspapers had carriages attached.

Did some mail trains running overnight, indeed have normal carriages too? I'm ill-informed here, and seeking information. I'd kind-of vaguely thought that "back in the day", night-running mail trains were valuable for getting people where they wanted in a hurry -- but is "mail" here, mostly a misnomer applied by laymen? (Has the Irish Mail actually carried mail, later than in the days of "ancient history"?)

(There's a series of "whodunits" published in quite recent years, which I like. They are set in the early / mid 1920s: involve much use of trains for people's getting from A to B, and the [female] author seems on the whole, to have done a pretty good job of research re rail travel and working, of the period. In one of these, a principal character -- a police detective -- has to get from London to Derby ASAP: "Bradshaw informed him that a mail train left St. Pancras at midnight.".)

 

[Tim R-T-C]

In one of these, a principal character -- a police detective -- has to get from London to Derby ASAP: "Bradshaw informed him that a mail train left St. Pancras at midnight.".)

If it is in Bradshaw, then it will have been a passenger carrying train, as my understanding, this was a passenger timetable.

Although of course as a police detective he might have been able to claim transportation on a non-passenger service.

 

[krus_aragon]

Did some mail trains running overnight, indeed have normal carriages too? I'm ill-informed here, and seeking information. I'd kind-of vaguely thought that "back in the day", night-running mail trains were valuable for getting people where they wanted in a hurry -- but is "mail" here, mostly a misnomer applied by laymen? (Has the Irish Mail actually carried mail, later than in the days of "ancient history"?)

I haven't any details on the recent history of the Irish Mail, but here's an example from June 1970 at Dovey Junction on the Cambrian, as posted on North Wales Coast Railway's Notice Board for December 7th, 2015:

The DMU for Aberystwyth waits in platform 1 for the connection from Pwllheli on platform 2 while a green Class 24 with white solebar accelerates through the loop with the 18:30 Aberystwyth - York mail train with its two passenger coaches on the rear. The loop was later removed, but in recent times has come back into use, in a slightly different layout allowing Aberystwyth line trains in either direction to call at the platform.

That would have been travelling overnight to reach York in the wee hours of the morning, complete with passenger carriages.

 

[Calthrop]

I haven't any details on the recent history of the Irish Mail, but here's an example from June 1970 at Dovey Junction on the Cambrian, as posted on North Wales Coast Railway's Notice Board for December 7th, 2015:

That would have been travelling overnight to reach York in the wee hours of the morning, complete with passenger carriages.

Those were the days ! As the chap said -- a journey to daunt (and sore) any railway enthusiast.

 

[30907]

The Aber Mails wasn't a TPO on the Cambrian - but plenty of TPOs did run in ordinary night (and even day) trains - but weren't accessible from the rest of the train. In fact IIRC the mails-only trains were rarer but more famous: East Coast, West Coast and West Country (not its right name).

 

[Taunton]

Getting away from excursions, but nevertheless relevant to passengers stranded, the overnight trains had a mixture of sleeper passengers, seating accommodation, newspapers, mails, TPO mail storage, and parcels (not the post office but the railway's own substantial parcels service). Each service had its own formation and mix of these and there probably weren't two the same.

All these segments just seemed to fall away in the 1980s. Right to the end the seated accommodation was in side corridor, not open, stock, which if not full formed an excellent bed with the armrests raised - no fixed armrests nonsense. Military going back to base (because latest report time always seemed to be 06.00) formed a significant proportion of users, the overnights through Taunton always had a good proportion of sailors in uniform headed to Plymouth, plus the more hardy of commercial travellers pocketing their overnight hotel allowances.

The overnights were commonly huge and heavy trains, generally the heaviest of the day. There were two major Paddington to WofE services which long came through Taunton at much the same time for decades. Both ran the "old way" via Bristol, one came through just about midnight, ad the second at about 2 am. In steam days both were King services, and later they always had Westerns in charge. On summer Friday nights they were both duplicated close behind, the second section could be seen in the distance sat outside Taunton platform waiting for the first to depart. The first couple of coaches would be proper TPO cars, in Royal Mail livery, and enormous stacks of mails were left at the west end of Taunton platform, quite unattended, both before and after the trains passed. A little later in the night the "North Mail" from Newcastle etc was due, but I never saw it. However I met my share of those arriving from overseas via London, having come in late to either Heathrow airport or Dover.

There was also the "Newspapers", one of the few night services to actually run via the Berks & Hants rather than Bristol. This was nonstop to Exeter, then on to Crrnwall, and was privately paid for by the Newspapers Publishers Association, and not in the timetable. It ran at Cornish Riviera speed and slammed through at 80mph-plus on the Down Main, with porters crossing the tracks at the barrow crossings. Remember this was before any train headlights of worth. The signalbox would make a PA announcement, and the Western would give a huge horn blast on approach. There were always a couple of BSKs at the back, and invariably a few sailors seated in them who had "persuaded" the guard at Paddington. The Newspapers was the train that had what is undoubtedly the closest escape from being wrecked of any British train, in the 1940 Norton Fitzwarren accident, when it overtook on the next track the overnight passenger just as it was being derailed at speed, the King must have slewed across its track no more than a second after it passed, and the last couple of Newspapers vans were all scored from ballast being thrown up, with windows broken. Our long-serving family doctor in the town had been one of many called out in the night to the scene, and had distressing stories of what was to be found there.

While all this and more was going on, there was a succession of freights making their way round the back of the station on the avoiding line, in diesel days many Hymek-hauled with their distinctive thrumming. The WofE main line was actually busier overnight than in the day, when there weren't that many freights.

 

[pitdiver]

Looking at it from the opposite side. I can remember going on a private charter to Blackpool. On the return there were some football supported who had missed their service. So the staff at Blackpool put them on our Private charter. I believe some senior manager received a strongly worded letter from the guy who organised the charter.