School train

[jackmerlin.livejournal.com]

Did boarding schools of the Marlow period really have a designated train that was full of everyone going back to a particular school? (Autumn Term, End of Term,)What sort of circuitous route did they have to take?

Comments

[hooloovoo_42]

AIUI, a lot of schools had trains that went from London to wherever. They seemed to be mentioned in pretty much all the school stories set before the present day - Mallory Towers, Chalet School etc. How the pupils arrived at London would probably have been down to individual locations.

I have to say that in the days of regular trains and not very many private cars, it would seem like the logical way of doing things.

[manda-09.livejournal.com]

It was qutie common to have a "school train", but I don't know if it was designated one - more a train which people going back to school caught.

My boarding school (late 80s to mid 90s) had a designated train, but it was a normal scheduled service.

[mrs-redboots.livejournal.com]

Either a designated train, or, more probably, a few carriages reserved on a regular train. I was at boarding-school during the 1960s, and at the beginning and end of each term (and possibly half-term, but I don't remember) a school train was organised to/from Waterloo. You were expected to write to the housemistress during the holidays to let her know how you proposed returning to school at the start of the following term, so that they knew the numbers, both for seat reservations and for the coaches that met the train at the local station to transfer you to the boarding-houses.

I only took the train once, as far as I remember, as from where we lived, it was easier to drive. As I recall, it was just the ordinary journey from Waterloo to the town where the school was; I can't remember whether we took up the entire train or just a few carriages.

I don't know, either, when they stopped running school trains....

[clanwilliam.livejournal.com]

It wasn't a designated train as such, more reserved carriages/compartments. However, it would have been plausible, had the school been located close to a small, rarely used station (such as a request stop), that a faster train (an express or semi-fast) would have stopped there for beginning and end of terms, to ensure that the journey was less tiring for children and didn't mean they had to change everywhere.

To take a hypothetical example: a school in Devon, on the south coast near Torquay, but the nearest station is a request stop that only has one platform. Normally, to get there by train from London, one would have to go to Exeter and transfer to one of a very limited number of trains and then request that the train stop there. However, arranging that one or two trains from London to Plymouth (normally stopping at only a few places along the way) would stop there on six days a year (ie, beginning and end of each term), would be sensible and pretty easy to arrange. Pupils who found it easier to get to Exeter than London would join the train at Exeter.

In a similar way, I found myself on the "school" bus from Coniston in the Lake District a few years ago. It was a regular bus, but it also did the school run. The driver warned me, but I would have had to wait another hour for the next one, so I braved the brats. That was a public bus that runs Monday to Friday in term time, and is specifically labelled as such, but it's still a public bus.

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

This - they still lay on some extra trains or carriages for football matches and similar large-crowd events, so back when there were more rural branch lines it would have been even easier. Having carriages reserved for a certain group is still possible (compartments were phased out totally a few years ago, but were mostly carriages 20 years ago).

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Bordesley station in Birmingham only operates on match days for Birmingham City.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

They could have added extra carriages to an existing train, I suppose.