Drinking on the train…
Discussion
This cracks me up… 
Luckily I don’t use the train very often but tempted to take a can of beer or two, probably craft ale for extra points with a glass next time I go!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/food-and-drink/feature...
The delicate art of boozing on the train (and why normal rules don't apply)
Drinking alcohol on public transport can be romantic and cavalier – so long as you do it with finesse
rch 2022 • 3:00pm
Racegoers drinking Champagne on their way to Royal Ascot
This week Twitter took a brief rest from horror and backbiting to celebrate an unknown woman who uncorked a magnum of pink Bollinger at 11am on a train to London and polished it off – using a crystal flute, no less – just before arriving into Waterloo at 12.10pm, her progress admiringly tracked by Twitter user Huw Burford-Taylor.
The outpouring of enthusiasm that followed for this heroic act of consumption and functioning dipsomania – with many chipping in memories of vintages sampled at odd hours on obscure rail services – speaks to a deep connection in the British psyche between trains and booze. Simply put, once you pull out of the station, the bets are off.
There is something romantic, cavalier and quixotic about drinking on a train. Someone else is driving, time is suspended, seating – if you’re lucky and on the right rail franchise – is comfortable, and beautiful scenery scrolls by outside. The usual stipulations against drinking in public are suspended when on a train, as are the parallel concerns about calories. Quite randomly, hours after the Bolly-would saga unfolded, a photo appeared in my timeline of an open bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape on a train table bound for Cornwall with the words: “Tastes better when served by someone else at 125mph.”
Well, quite. Drinking on a train is entirely different to the sense-deadening desperation of boozing before or during a flight (where cabin pressure and recycled air numb the tastebuds, hence the popularity of highly spiced Bloody Marys). On a train you can be Daniel Craig and Eva Green in Casino Royale, or Cary Grant and Eve Marie Saint in North by Northwest, though a quaffing companion is not strictly necessary.
On a plane you’re just a bored, pickled sardine in a tube, even in first class. On a bus, you’re a derelict Rab C Nesbitt and in a taxi you’re an alcoholic vulgarian (especially if it’s a shared Uber Pool car). In your own car, of course, you’re a potentially lethal liability and a criminal. But on a train, a drink is at the very least a well-earned reward for getting through the working day, at the very best a rubicund-bubbled prelude to an adventure.
I’m old enough to remember the days of British Rail and its curly buffet-car sandwiches, when I’m pretty sure that the alcohol available in railway stations was limited to ghastly concourse pubs, and the stuff was pretty much impossible to find on board, except in luxury services that might have a dining car. The profit motive of privatisation and the liberalisation of licensing laws – which led to a more celebratory, less buttoned-up attitude to booze all round – in the 1990s undoubtedly added to the ease of getting squiffed on a train.
Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe hitting the train booze in Some Like It Hot
Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe hitting the train booze in Some Like It Hot CREDIT: APL
So too did the spread of miniature wine bottles from planes to trains (it’s not really drinking if it’s that small, is it?) and the advent of M&S gin-in-a-tin. Long before Fleabag’s hot priest further popularised these potent pop-tops, a pre-mixed drink in a can had already become the acceptable way to wind down on the commute home, or to ease one’s way into a weekend in the country. It put the gin in ‘engine’, or vice versa.
It depends on the length of the journey, of course, as Labour’s Diane Abbott found when she was spotted one evening in 2019, drinking a ready-mixed mojito on an Overground train through her north London constituency. It didn’t help that Abbott was then Shadow Home Secretary, and drinking had been illegal on Transport for London services since 2008. It was banned across the network by the then-London mayor, Boris Johnson.
As with so much else in life, the acceptability of drinking on a train depends entirely on the style and spirit in which it is undertaken. On a mid-morning train to Devon last year, my wife and I walked to our seats past a couple of lads, neither older than 20, who were already working their way through a 24-can slab of Strongbow Cider. Later one of them stood behind me in the queue for the loo. “Gonna be long mate?” he asked, with a pleasant smile. “It’s just, I think I might have to puke...”
There was nothing quantitively different to his early morning canfest and the woman sinking 1.5 litres of pink Champagne: indeed, sip for sip, she may have consumed more units of alcohol. But the quality of the wine, and the dashing touch of the cut-glass vessel, elevates the second case from something squalid to an elegant act of self indulgence.
A reveller at the Circle Line party just before the alcohol ban came into effect in 2008
A reveller at the Circle Line party just before the alcohol ban came into effect in 2008 CREDIT: Daniel Berehulak
Similarly, compare Abbott’s grim homeward commute with the panache shown by anarchist group Space Hijackers, which organised a drinks party for around 150 people on London’s Circle Line back in 1999. Though it no longer lives up to its name, the fact that trains ran in an endless loop on this route made it an ideal place for the suspension of reality required for booze-commuting. A giant, final Circle Line party, for which thousands dressed up and brought music, food, wine and glitter balls, took place on 31 May 2008, the night before the TFL ban came into effect.
I wouldn’t dream of drinking on a tube train now, or (as a friend and I did after a horrifically delayed flight back to London) uncorking a bottle of duty free Scotch on a packed Heathrow Express. The rules are fairly simple. Don’t drink on any service where you have to stand up, or on a Pendolino, where spillage is a serious risk. Don’t drink beyond your capacity: not all of us have the constitution of Bolly-woman, and you should never get to a stage of inebriation that results in you grabbing fellow commuters, the emergency cord, or your suddenly resurgent lunch. No one wants to meet Thomas the Tanked-Up Engine.
Wine and pre-mixed drinks are classier than beer: that’s just a fact. Bringing your own glasses is elegant, as well as environmentally friendly. Bringing your own snacks in Tupperware is naff. Unveiling a cocktail shaker, ice, mixers and a bottle of spirits is taking things to a level of pretension that runs counter to the spirit of drinking on board. It’s about relaxation, a symbolic shriving of the daily drudgery, an escape. As the old BR slogan had it: let the train take the strain.
Luckily I don’t use the train very often but tempted to take a can of beer or two, probably craft ale for extra points with a glass next time I go!
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/food-and-drink/feature...
The delicate art of boozing on the train (and why normal rules don't apply)
Drinking alcohol on public transport can be romantic and cavalier – so long as you do it with finesse
rch 2022 • 3:00pm
Racegoers drinking Champagne on their way to Royal Ascot
This week Twitter took a brief rest from horror and backbiting to celebrate an unknown woman who uncorked a magnum of pink Bollinger at 11am on a train to London and polished it off – using a crystal flute, no less – just before arriving into Waterloo at 12.10pm, her progress admiringly tracked by Twitter user Huw Burford-Taylor.
The outpouring of enthusiasm that followed for this heroic act of consumption and functioning dipsomania – with many chipping in memories of vintages sampled at odd hours on obscure rail services – speaks to a deep connection in the British psyche between trains and booze. Simply put, once you pull out of the station, the bets are off.
There is something romantic, cavalier and quixotic about drinking on a train. Someone else is driving, time is suspended, seating – if you’re lucky and on the right rail franchise – is comfortable, and beautiful scenery scrolls by outside. The usual stipulations against drinking in public are suspended when on a train, as are the parallel concerns about calories. Quite randomly, hours after the Bolly-would saga unfolded, a photo appeared in my timeline of an open bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape on a train table bound for Cornwall with the words: “Tastes better when served by someone else at 125mph.”
Well, quite. Drinking on a train is entirely different to the sense-deadening desperation of boozing before or during a flight (where cabin pressure and recycled air numb the tastebuds, hence the popularity of highly spiced Bloody Marys). On a train you can be Daniel Craig and Eva Green in Casino Royale, or Cary Grant and Eve Marie Saint in North by Northwest, though a quaffing companion is not strictly necessary.
On a plane you’re just a bored, pickled sardine in a tube, even in first class. On a bus, you’re a derelict Rab C Nesbitt and in a taxi you’re an alcoholic vulgarian (especially if it’s a shared Uber Pool car). In your own car, of course, you’re a potentially lethal liability and a criminal. But on a train, a drink is at the very least a well-earned reward for getting through the working day, at the very best a rubicund-bubbled prelude to an adventure.
I’m old enough to remember the days of British Rail and its curly buffet-car sandwiches, when I’m pretty sure that the alcohol available in railway stations was limited to ghastly concourse pubs, and the stuff was pretty much impossible to find on board, except in luxury services that might have a dining car. The profit motive of privatisation and the liberalisation of licensing laws – which led to a more celebratory, less buttoned-up attitude to booze all round – in the 1990s undoubtedly added to the ease of getting squiffed on a train.
Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe hitting the train booze in Some Like It Hot
Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe hitting the train booze in Some Like It Hot CREDIT: APL
So too did the spread of miniature wine bottles from planes to trains (it’s not really drinking if it’s that small, is it?) and the advent of M&S gin-in-a-tin. Long before Fleabag’s hot priest further popularised these potent pop-tops, a pre-mixed drink in a can had already become the acceptable way to wind down on the commute home, or to ease one’s way into a weekend in the country. It put the gin in ‘engine’, or vice versa.
It depends on the length of the journey, of course, as Labour’s Diane Abbott found when she was spotted one evening in 2019, drinking a ready-mixed mojito on an Overground train through her north London constituency. It didn’t help that Abbott was then Shadow Home Secretary, and drinking had been illegal on Transport for London services since 2008. It was banned across the network by the then-London mayor, Boris Johnson.
As with so much else in life, the acceptability of drinking on a train depends entirely on the style and spirit in which it is undertaken. On a mid-morning train to Devon last year, my wife and I walked to our seats past a couple of lads, neither older than 20, who were already working their way through a 24-can slab of Strongbow Cider. Later one of them stood behind me in the queue for the loo. “Gonna be long mate?” he asked, with a pleasant smile. “It’s just, I think I might have to puke...”
There was nothing quantitively different to his early morning canfest and the woman sinking 1.5 litres of pink Champagne: indeed, sip for sip, she may have consumed more units of alcohol. But the quality of the wine, and the dashing touch of the cut-glass vessel, elevates the second case from something squalid to an elegant act of self indulgence.
A reveller at the Circle Line party just before the alcohol ban came into effect in 2008
A reveller at the Circle Line party just before the alcohol ban came into effect in 2008 CREDIT: Daniel Berehulak
Similarly, compare Abbott’s grim homeward commute with the panache shown by anarchist group Space Hijackers, which organised a drinks party for around 150 people on London’s Circle Line back in 1999. Though it no longer lives up to its name, the fact that trains ran in an endless loop on this route made it an ideal place for the suspension of reality required for booze-commuting. A giant, final Circle Line party, for which thousands dressed up and brought music, food, wine and glitter balls, took place on 31 May 2008, the night before the TFL ban came into effect.
I wouldn’t dream of drinking on a tube train now, or (as a friend and I did after a horrifically delayed flight back to London) uncorking a bottle of duty free Scotch on a packed Heathrow Express. The rules are fairly simple. Don’t drink on any service where you have to stand up, or on a Pendolino, where spillage is a serious risk. Don’t drink beyond your capacity: not all of us have the constitution of Bolly-woman, and you should never get to a stage of inebriation that results in you grabbing fellow commuters, the emergency cord, or your suddenly resurgent lunch. No one wants to meet Thomas the Tanked-Up Engine.
Wine and pre-mixed drinks are classier than beer: that’s just a fact. Bringing your own glasses is elegant, as well as environmentally friendly. Bringing your own snacks in Tupperware is naff. Unveiling a cocktail shaker, ice, mixers and a bottle of spirits is taking things to a level of pretension that runs counter to the spirit of drinking on board. It’s about relaxation, a symbolic shriving of the daily drudgery, an escape. As the old BR slogan had it: let the train take the strain.
irc said:
As with everything in the Peoples Republic of Scotland the SNP extract the fun from life wherever they can. So there is an alcohol ban.
So for drinking on a train the golden rule is to transfer it to an innocent looking container.
I applaud you for circumventing the nonsense! So for drinking on a train the golden rule is to transfer it to an innocent looking container.
I worked with a chap who commuted into London from Henley direction each morning. He would describe the same four women who got on at an adjacent stop and would regularly open and share a bottle of champagne.
That’s right, on the way into London at 7am four people from the Home Counties opening a bottle of bubbly before arriving at work.
That’s right, on the way into London at 7am four people from the Home Counties opening a bottle of bubbly before arriving at work.
OMITN said:
I worked with a chap who commuted into London from Henley direction each morning. He would describe the same four women who got on at an adjacent stop and would regularly open and share a bottle of champagne.
That’s right, on the way into London at 7am four people from the Home Counties opening a bottle of bubbly before arriving at work.
What did he describe them as, alcoholics?That’s right, on the way into London at 7am four people from the Home Counties opening a bottle of bubbly before arriving at work.
Evoluzione said:
OMITN said:
I worked with a chap who commuted into London from Henley direction each morning. He would describe the same four women who got on at an adjacent stop and would regularly open and share a bottle of champagne.
That’s right, on the way into London at 7am four people from the Home Counties opening a bottle of bubbly before arriving at work.
What did he describe them as, alcoholics?That’s right, on the way into London at 7am four people from the Home Counties opening a bottle of bubbly before arriving at work.
Had a Norwegian teddy boy mate way back called Ulf.
We were on the train one day, when he went and came back with a couple of cans of Watneys.
Took one swig, spat it out, and chucked the can out of the window, saying "it's effing gnatspi$$"
I explained to the old dear opposite "Rude Ulf the ted loathes train beer"
I'll get me coat...
We were on the train one day, when he went and came back with a couple of cans of Watneys.
Took one swig, spat it out, and chucked the can out of the window, saying "it's effing gnatspi$$"
I explained to the old dear opposite "Rude Ulf the ted loathes train beer"
I'll get me coat...
irc said:
As with everything in the Peoples Republic of Scotland the SNP extract the fun from life wherever they can. So there is an alcohol ban.
So for drinking on a train the golden rule is to transfer it to an innocent looking container.
Eh? I was served beer on a train from Edinburgh to Dundee in July 2021. Is this a recent rule? Chap opposite me got 2. So for drinking on a train the golden rule is to transfer it to an innocent looking container.
Or is it just bringing your own that's not allowed?
sixor8 said:
Eh? I was served beer on a train from Edinburgh to Dundee in July 2021. Is this a recent rule? Chap opposite me got 2.
Or is it just bringing your own that's not allowed?
It's a Scotrail ban from 2020.Or is it just bringing your own that's not allowed?
https://www.scotrail.co.uk/about-scotrail/our-rule...
Perhaps intercity services in Scotland operated by other companies like Virgin or East Coast are still serving.
birlinn said:
Had a Norwegian teddy boy mate way back called Ulf.
We were on the train one day, when he went and came back with a couple of cans of Watneys.
Took one swig, spat it out, and chucked the can out of the window, saying "it's effing gnatspi$$"
I explained to the old dear opposite "Rude Ulf the ted loathes train beer"
I'll get me coat...
Two people sitting next to a log fire, talking about the best chess games they had won.We were on the train one day, when he went and came back with a couple of cans of Watneys.
Took one swig, spat it out, and chucked the can out of the window, saying "it's effing gnatspi$$"
I explained to the old dear opposite "Rude Ulf the ted loathes train beer"
I'll get me coat...
"Chess nuts boasting by an open fire"
bristolracer said:
I used to love a can of Mckewan's Tartan on the train. In the days when trains still had buffet cars
Think it was Younger’s that made Tartan Special?I think you are referring to McEwan’s as a brewery.
Other than that, you are spot on
Edited by Stuart70 on Sunday 13th March 10:37
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