Ever notice how within a short distance from most railway stations there will usually be a pub? It’s not hard to imagine why; once the canals were shunted out and railways proved their supremacy in transporting large swathes of the population, it made sense to make them the nervous centre of many townships. Where there’s a will there’s a way, and where there’s a pub there’s a railway.
Many regional towns in Australia had pubs crop up nearby the stations so weary travellers could wet their gobs while waiting for the whistle of their next train, or the ring of the bell by the station master to let them know to board soon. One can imagine those early days, a traveller sitting at the window of a regional pub, quickly sculling their beer to catch the next train to Darwin or Perth or wherever they need to go. Nowadays, one anxiously refreshes TripView rather than listening out for the bustling locomotive. In any case, they will probably be drinking something alcoholic.
Alcohol and the railways have had an intimate relationship since the dawn of train travel. Prior to the invention of dining cars in England, refreshment stops had to be made along the way at allocated stations. Many guides of the time recommended taking aboard refreshments for yourself, lest you go hungry waiting for the railway directors to decide when you should or shouldn’t eat. These guides often recommended alcohol for the journeys.
In 1851, R.S. Surtees listed his go-to lunch pack: “cold chicken cuts, sliced tongue, bread, biscuits, cakes, with sherry-and-water or brandy-and-water to wash it all down”. W.H. Martin of the Burlington Arcade suggested “a walking stick, whip-stick, or umbrella-stick, containing long cylindrical bottle and wine-glass, and receptacle for biscuits or compressed meat, intended for railway travellers and others.” In The Handy Book, they argued for “a few ham and beef sandwiches, together with a little cold wine or brandy and water”.
According to Simon Bradley, “Taverns near the principle stopping places along the Liverpool & Manchester route sent out trays of refreshments, including Eccles cakes, brandy and cigars”. Licensing firms such as Messrs Spiers and Ponds took advantage of the need for refreshments along the way for long journeys and set up refreshment rooms which proved popular in places like Farringdon Street station. There, they also sold luncheon baskets to have on the train which featured (what else?) a half pint bottle of claret or stout.
Once dining cars were eventually established, being served a pint during one’s train journey didn’t require exiting the vehicle at all. After nationalisation of the railways, novelty train carriages emerged including double decker cars, but more importantly tavern cars. Designed by Oliver Bulleid, these ‘pubs on wheels’ served draught as well as bottled beer. Modelled after a real pub, the interiors were made of real oaken wood, and the exterior decoration was “tricked out in painted mock-brickwork and black-and-cream timbering”, according to Bradley.
Elsewhere in the world, Russia was beginning to establish its own railway — the Tsar was impressed “with the speed with which the British government had recently transferred troops from Liverpool to Manchester”, Paul Hastings writes. An experimental line was soon built “from St Petersburg to the Tsar’s summer residence at Tsarskoe Selo and thence to Pavlosk”. Opening in October 1937 the line was an immediate hit, “bec[oming] a popular day-trip resort for St Petersburg citizens”. This line did not meet merchant demands for a “more efficient transport system”, with the Minister for Finance making clear that “ while railways in other countries were built to industrial centres, in Russia the first line led to a tavern.”
Meanwhile, in America, labourers hard at work laying down the transcontinental railroad were met with terrible conditions, fighting off heat, unsafe conditions, a rough landscape and pushback from the Indigenous populations who resisted against encroaching trackwork, attacking the workers as they went. According to Hastings, “[a]lthough construction was carried out under the protection of U.S. troops, they were prepared to take the 1,000 rifles […] issued to defend themselves and their droves of beef-cattle at any time.”
Hastings goes on: “At ‘end of track,’ temporary towns of farmhouses, dance-halls, and saloons sprang up.” It is almost as if in the wake of this spread of colonialism across the ‘Wild West’, the worst impulses of humanity sprung up with it, devolving into murder and drunken debauchery. Trains were described as ‘hells on wheels’ and these pop up towns were described as ‘roaring impromptu cities full of gold, lust and death’.
One might recall Ted Kotcheff’s Wake in Fright, a film in which the worst horrors of the Australian identity are on full display: sexism, racism, alcoholism, gambling, toxic masculinity, animal abuse, and more. It is no wonder that the mechanism or the portal into which our protagonist enters this world is through the engine of the steam train, and one of the first places he enters after leaving the train is the pub.