Great Western Coffee Shop

Times and ages have changed - but it's interesting to look back at the history of these long distance trains. From  https://railcar.co.uk/type/blue-pullman/summary tells us

They were beautiful trains which I travelled on many times at a 5/- supplement to the normal fare.

They were also the preferred mode of transport when Bristol City F C, under the wings of Harry Dolman, had away games in the F A Cup and the team travelled in their luxury to the city/town of the match. I remember one such match against Leeds United when the 8 car Bristol Pullman was fully booked with fans travelling with the team and enjoying breakfast on the way there and dinner on the way home. I couldn't afford the fare for that trip but I did travel on one of the other four football specials run from the Bristol area to Leeds on that day and it was a fantastic atmosphere, no hint of the violence which seems to mar todays football rivalry. Leeds chairman at the time sent his chauffeured limousine to Leeds station to convey Harry and his wife Marina to Elland Road and the Leeds team coach was provided for the B C players too.

It would be fantastic if an HST was preserved, put back into their original 4 round table seating and painted in the Blue Pullman livery.

Perhaps one of the ROSCO's owning them might be generous and gift one to the nations railway preservation movement at the end of their everyday working lives.

I travelled on the Blue Pullman several times from Leamington Spa to Paddington.  The main thing I remember was their appalling ride, and trying to eat your breakfast while bouncing over Aynho Junction.

2/- for a beer!! Adjusted for inflation that's about £2.10 today. And 12/6 for fillet steak. Around £14 today.

Actual prices for similar today on the GWR Pullman are nearer £4 for the beer and £30 for the steak. Of course you can't get anything like that between Bristol and London in 2018.

£2 7s for an Ordinary 1st Class Single (inc 10/- Pullman supplement) from Bristol to Paddington in 1960 on the Blue Pullman. Adjusted for inflation that's around £52 today. Actual price for an Anytime 1st Class Single in 2018 - £154.50. Although you can get a 1st Advance for as little as £35.50 today. But highly unlikely to get that price at a peak AM time equivalent to the AM Blue Pullman departure.

Average gross weekly wage in 1960 was £14 2s 6d. That's around £315 today adjusted for inflation. Actual average gross weekly wage today is £550.

A 1st Class Single from Bristol to London in 1960 on the Blue Pullman would cost around 16% of the average weekly wage. Today the nearest equivalent fare (Anytime 1st Single) would cost 28% of the average weekly wage.

Some things, it seems, were better in the old days. You earned less in real terms but could buy more.


Note. Errors and omissions excepted. Quick fag packet maths using various sources to calculate. ONS, Bank of England, Hansard.

Do you need to explain "12/6" and "£14 2s 6d" for our younger readers?

Well, I've lived entirely in a post decimalisation world and I know what they mean.  ;)

For those who may not know:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_Day

An odd quirk was that rail fares pre decimalisation were always quoted in shillings, even if over a pound.

Today I guess they might have been priced in guineas.

Earnings measurements for more than a few years back are a problem, as they weren't collected on a basis similar to today's.  I've got a figure from a series constructed by the BoE specifically to extend the current average weekly earnings data backwards*, and for 1960 that is £9.46 (Jan: £9.19 to Dec: £9.74). That would make a noticeable difference to the comparisons, though perhaps not to the overall conclusions - that the wide spread of fares now makes the full walk-up fare a lot more expensive, and that railways are not one of those bits of the economy where productivity has gone up a lot due to machines and computers and the like.

* In the recently renamed "A millennium of macroeconomic data (https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/statistics/research-datasets/a-millennium-of-macroeconomic-data-for-the-uk.xlsx?la=en&hash=73ABBFB603A709FEEB1FD349B1C61F11527F1DE4)", table M6 "Spliced Average Weekly Earnings series, 1919-2015".

Not that odd... I remember all the toys in the Freemans catalogue were quoted in shillings up to 99/11; likewise we had the Fifty Bob Tailors and so on. Come to think of it, there can't have been many things costing more than a fiver in them days. 1/10 for a pint of beer anyone? That's what it cost in 1966: ten pints for less than a quid.

I'm sure the first beer I bought regularly cost 1/7 a pint, and that was in 1968. That was Grays of Chelmsford, which closed down in 1974 and was replaced by Green King. I was going to say bought by them, implying they bought the tied estate, but on checking I find that Grays still exists and still owns pubs. So they just closed their brewery, no doubt entering some distribution agreement with Greene King.

I can imagine why - their beer was not really much good; it tasted of soap. It may not be part of the received narrative of the good old days, but some breweries deserved to closed down (usually by being taken over). So 1/7 may have been no less than a fair price for it.

In South East London in 1968 our local served Courage and I think that was 2/6 (12.5p) - London prices were London prices even then.

When our French relatives came to London, they assumed that the brewery's adverts ("Take Courage") were some sort of political exhortation.

Brickwood’s ‘best’ bitter at 1/8d per pint in Portsmouth around then. However Gales was much better, when we students could afford it!

When I started driving in my very first own vehicle petrol was 2/6 a gallon (12.5p). in todays money that would be about 2.75p per litre. When I bought my very first, and my only, house as a new build property at a cost of £3650 in 1970 JET had appeared on the scene and their pump price was 4/- a gallon (20p) or in todays money (4.4p per litre).

I HOPE I GOT MY SUMS RIGHT WITH THOSE COMPARABLE FIGURES.

How things have changed.

Here is a photograph taken by me at Swansea High Street in 1970.  The BLUE PULLMAN wasn't BLUE then as they had been repainted into a reversed GREY/BLUE corporate livery with yellow front end:

(http://cbrailways.co.uk/PhotoAlbumsPro/1379866239/Blue%20Pullman%20at%20Swansea%201970s_1.jpg?)
Photograph (c)2018 SandTEngineer