A proper cup of tea?

[hexagon789]

The 1956 Swindon Edinburgh - Glasgow DMUs had a buffet car, as had the Swindon Class 120 and 126.

So did the 101s used between Carlisle and Newcastle, a very similar design to the miniature buffet counter style as on the 119/120s.

 

[WesternLancer]

An American friend was recently viewing a BR publicity film from the early 1960's called Spick and Span. The film is about carriage cleaners, etc. They asked me what year the ceramic cups, shown as left on the seats by passengers after their drinks, were replaced by paper cups?

Spic and Span BR film...

Going back to the actual film it's informative on various levels - both for shots of carriage interiors and the backbreaking nature of a lot of the work (floors scrubbed by hand on the basic level cleans, not eg mops)

Not a lot of PPE either - all the cleaning done with bare hands by the looks of it - despite a range of cleaning products being used no doubt of various strengths.

Clearly the British public's ability to leave litter all over the place (I find the UK poor in this regard compared with a fair number of other countries I have been in) is long standing...

 

[LowLevel]

I'm fairly sure the green crockery was a nationalised industry standard also available in the NHS. One of the signalboxes I work on a heritage railway has a full set from that source.

Certainly MML/EMT/EMR still used proper cups in first class until COVID - several eras worth can be found in mess rooms and the training academy.

 

[30907]

I remember the Maxpack tea, a truly disgusting drink!

I think the film mentioned in post #1, showing the gathering of crockery cups from train coach seats by the coach cleaning ladies, must be an anomaly, maybe created just to enhance the storyline of the film?

Not necessarily. Passengers didn't take their teas and coffees away from the buffet, but staff on some routes would serve passengers at their seats.
No idea how widespread this was, but I remember around 1970 travelling down to Teignmouth with my family and being offered hot drinks in our compartment - the cups and saucers came first, followed by the drinks - and I don't recall the empties being collected before we alighted.
The other possibility is the platform trolley service that AIUI went along the platform at some stations, and ISTR reading somewhere that empties were collected up in baskets and returned to base.

I think the HST was the first train designed around food being taken back to your seat.

 

[WesternLancer]

I'm fairly sure the green crockery was a nationalised industry standard also available in the NHS. One of the signalboxes I work on a heritage railway has a full set from that source.

Sounds possible indeed. Tho the BR ones I have / have seen images of on e bay have BTH on the bottom or the double arrows on the base, so perhaps a fairly standard public sector product (the preglaze shapeway) but orders by industry as it were.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 4 May 2021 ==

Not necessarily. Passengers didn't take their teas and coffees away from the buffet, but staff on some routes would serve passengers at their seats.
No idea how widespread this was, but I remember around 1970 travelling down to Teignmouth with my family and being offered hot drinks in our compartment - the cups and saucers came first, followed by the drinks - and I don't recall the empties being collected before we alighted.
The other possibility is the platform trolley service that AIUI went along the platform at some stations, and ISTR reading somewhere that empties were collected up in baskets and returned to base.

I think the HST was the first train designed around food being taken back to your seat.

Thanks - sheds more light on the situation, and tallies with what the film portrays and commentary indicates.

 

[OldandRambling]

Clearly the British public's ability to leave litter all over the place (I find the UK poor in this regard compared with a fair number of other countries I have been in) is long standing...

That may well be true of that time, I think many of us now have a better understanding about not littering and also re-cycling.

I have enjoyed several long distance train trips in India. It is common practice for the on board catering crews to simply throw full bin liners of rubbish out from the speeding trains!

( Anyone fancying a read of some Indian train adventures can click here:... My India train trips! )

 

[LowLevel]

Someone I know also enjoys a spot of digging every now and again around the site of the former GCR Leicester Carriage Sidings/Shed and it would appear long standing practice was just to throw damaged crockery out of the window, there is still loads of it about.

 

[WesternLancer]

That may well be true of that time, I think many of us now have a better understanding about not littering and also re-cycling.

I have enjoyed several long distance train trips in India. It is common practice for the on board catering crews to simply throw full bin liners of rubbish out from the speeding trains!

( Anyone fancying a read of some Indian train adventures can click here:... My India train trips! )

eek - That sounds a different order of problem in India.....

I guess I am always rather taken aback to sit down on a UK train (which has litter bins fitted) to find that the previous occupants seem to think their empty cups/cans/food wrappers/part eaten snack are what the next person wants to find on the table, floor, seat etc

And don't get me on to recycling...I rarely see those see through sack bins on stations without items in them that are clearly non recyclable. Makes me wonder if the recycling can in fact be sent for recycling when it is polluted like that and I suspect all too often it ends up in the same waste stream as the general rubbish - ie incineration or landfill. Mind you I suspect some of this is well meaning people who would like to recycle the item, and thus feel good about putting it into the recycling bin, but pay no attention to the fact that it is in fact non recyclable (such as non recyclable takeaway cups etc)

 

[Arglwydd Golau]

Anyway - I well remember one day a chap coming in for a cup of tea and bemoaning the disposable polystyrene cups and saying he preferred to drink from 'proper crockery' given he was planning to sit in the restaurant area. We can't have been very busy at that particular moment, so I asked him to hang on, I nipped down to the cellar, got one of these old Dudson cups and saucers, washed it up, and served his tea in that. I recall he was slightly taken aback that I could achieve this in response to his complaint / request!

That's exactly what my father would have done! He hated the plastic/polysterene cups (don't blame him) and not long after they were introduced always carried a mug in his bag and would ask the buffet staff to fill that for him.

No idea how widespread this was, but I remember around 1970 travelling down to Teignmouth with my family and being offered hot drinks in our compartment - the cups and saucers came first, followed by the drinks - and I don't recall the empties being collected before we alighted.
The other possibility is the platform trolley service that AIUI went along the platform at some stations, and ISTR reading somewhere that empties were collected up in baskets and returned to base.

Yes, definitely remember that! My recollection was that it was only coffee that was served. Pretty certain that the cups were collected when the carriages were cleaned and returned to the nearest Buffet (or Refreshment Room) and back into circulation.

Not easy to walk through the train balancing two (or more) cups and saucers and opening the sliding doors.

Maxpax tea should have been logged as a crime.

 

[WesternLancer]

That's exactly what my father would have done! He hated the plastic/polysterene cups (don't blame him) and not long after they were introduced always carried a mug in his bag and would ask the buffet staff to fill that for him.


Yes, definitely remember that! My recollection was that it was only coffee that was served. Pretty certain that the cups were collected when the carriages were cleaned and returned to the nearest Buffet (or Refreshment Room) and back into circulation.

Not easy to walk through the train balancing two (or more) cups and saucers and opening the sliding doors.

Maxpax tea should have been logged as a crime.

Thanks

"would ask the buffet staff to fill that for him."

Excellent approach. I'd have gladly done so.

"Pretty certain that the cups were collected when the carriages were cleaned and returned to the nearest Buffet (or Refreshment Room) and back into circulation."

As film describes then so that confirms the Q posed by @OldandRambling

"Maxpax tea should have been logged as a crime."

Well, at least perhaps worthy of an Amnesty International inquiry

 

[randyrippley]

Not necessarily. Passengers didn't take their teas and coffees away from the buffet, but staff on some routes would serve passengers at their seats.
No idea how widespread this was, but I remember around 1970 travelling down to Teignmouth with my family and being offered hot drinks in our compartment - the cups and saucers came first, followed by the drinks - and I don't recall the empties being collected before we alighted.
The other possibility is the platform trolley service that AIUI went along the platform at some stations, and ISTR reading somewhere that empties were collected up in baskets and returned to base.

I think the HST was the first train designed around food being taken back to your seat.

Not so - the miniature buffets in the class 120 & 121 were very much "back to seat". There wasn't room in a DMU for anything else.
Though these only had a limited time in use

 

[Arglwydd Golau]

Thanks

"would ask the buffet staff to fill that for him."

Excellent approach. I'd have gladly done so.

Not everyone would be so helpful! On the occasional trips I made with Dad in the 1970's/80's I do recall having to step in on a couple of occasions when the staff were quite obnoxious and refused point blank to fill his mug, Dad would become quite argumentative too! I think I would just accept the tea in whatever they were offering and transfer it to his mug!

 

[WesternLancer]

Not everyone would be so helpful! On the occasional trips I made with Dad in the 1970's/80's I do recall having to step in on a couple of occasions when the staff were quite obnoxious and refused point blank to fill his mug, Dad would become quite argumentative too! I think I would just accept the tea in whatever they were offering and transfer it to his mug!

Strange - because at that time the sort of food and drink hygiene 'regs' would not have been so stiff as they later became over such issues (eg when a pub would start to insist that they would not refill your glass but give you a fresh one, for example - a sensible hygiene precaution no doubt but at least I would say up until the late 80s early 90s not one many pubs were concerned about either way if you asked 'for a refill').

I guess some staff would think that if your cup/mug was larger than the standard cup they used you would be getting 'more than you paid for'.

Of course if the tea had been stewing for too long you just had to tip all of what was left in the urn away anyway - so makes no sense to begrudge a customer a bit extra. Esp since IIRC tea (and to a slightly lesser extent coffee) were the products sold with the biggest profit mark up. You did occasionally need a prompt from a customer to the fact that it was stewed as it was easy to forget how long it had been on the brew

As a tea drinker myself a point of contention was always the coffee strength. Some customers complaining the coffee was far too weak (I'd chuck an extra bag in the filter cone when doing the next brew - which probably played havoc with stock control...), whilst others complained it was far too strong - and want some of their cup tipped away and topped up with hot water. Of course those were the days when coffee came in a choice of 2 ways in most places in the UK: with milk or without milk....

 

[Merle Haggard]

I have enjoyed several long distance train trips in India. It is common practice for the on board catering crews to simply throw full bin liners of rubbish out from the speeding trains!

Restaurant car staff used to do this on B.R.- when I was on the Accidents Section there was a 'P-case'*, someone was injured climbing the stairs at Wolverton ground frame (a former signal box) by being struck by such a bag discarded from a passing Inter City. The small sliding windows on the kitchen side of Mk1 catering cars seemed to be used for the purpose because there were usually trails of brown (from coffee and tea, one hopes!) on the grey panelling each side of them.

Not everyone would be so helpful! On the occasional trips I made with Dad in the 1970's/80's I do recall having to step in on a couple of occasions when the staff were quite obnoxious and refused point blank to fill his mug, Dad would become quite argumentative too! I think I would just accept the tea in whatever they were offering and transfer it to his mug!

I had something similar at New St once; they only had the very large cups available, with the price to match. I asked if they could just half fill one and charge for the standard, but the rejection was quite harsh. As an aside, in all three sizes you got the same size tea-bag, all you were paying extra for was more warm water.


*P - case; incident resulting in personal injury caused by train movement.

 

[6Gman]

My recollection from the early/mid-70s was that trains with restaurant facilities would feature the at-seat service of coffee to utilise staff between meal sittings.

 

[StephenHunter]

Does anyone have pictures of the old BR cups?

 

[WesternLancer]

Does anyone have pictures of the old BR cups?

see my post #18 up thread for some on line auction images - though over the years there would have been other designs - plus you can see the cups mention in the film the OP linked, albeit briefly and not close up

 

[Merle Haggard]

The photo of the green teapot has just brought memories flooding back...

I think that teapots were provided if you had the 'pot of tea for two', but I'm not sure. What I certainly remember is that, however careful you were in positioning the spout of the teapot over the cup, either the tea would run out of the spout in an unexpected direction (often sideways) to miss the cup and run onto the table, or would not emerge from the spout at all, and further tilting would result in tea lifting the lid and running down the outside of the pot, again on to the table.

In the 1980s, Travellers' Fare aluminium ones which still had the same spout design shortcomings and also often a wonky lid hinge. Remember them???

 

[WesternLancer]

The photo of the green teapot has just brought memories flooding back...

I think that teapots were provided if you had the 'pot of tea for two', but I'm not sure. What I certainly remember is that, however careful you were in positioning the spout of the teapot over the cup, either the tea would run out of the spout in an unexpected direction (often sideways) to miss the cup and run onto the table, or would not emerge from the spout at all, and further tilting would result in tea lifting the lid and running down the outside of the pot, again on to the table.

In the 1980s, Travellers' Fare aluminium ones which still had the same spout design shortcomings and also often a wonky lid hinge. Remember them???



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Good points! Tea bag blocking spout problem described there Merle!

Metal tea pots where the spout is part of the same pressing as the body - no doubt to reduce costs of manufacture as opposed to brazing on the spout as a separate item - are often poor at pouring in my experience.

If you wanted a good one you need to get one made by the superb 'Old Hall' firm. Out of business since the 1980s but quite easy to find second hand, cheaper than a new (but useless) equivalent - http://www.oldhallclub.co.uk/
excellent pourers if not bent - pretty sure I have seen some with BR emblems so they must have supplied some parts of BR, but always a quality product so Old Hall may have been used for better class of services (eg pullmans or restaurant cars - but maybe not the 'everyday' buffet counter)

For pottery tea pots that pour properly you need Denby 'Nevvadrip' - reproduced in recent years as Denby 'Classic'. I've seen Denby stuff (mugs at least) with BR 'totem/flying sausage' logo on so they must have supplied BR in early years at least.

By 1980s at least I think most TF tea served from a large urn with tap at base type thing, but indeed this may have been if you wanted a mug for one person maybe. We made these with v large catering tea bags in the urns and of course good for speedy serving of the tea. I recall a daily dose in the urn at the end of the day with something called Stills Powder which removed all tanin stains and restored the stainless steel to a sparkle with minimal effort.

 

[billio]

GNER first class in the HSTs had proper cups.

And [off topic] those very nice etched wine glasses.
I seem to remember they served coffee and tea from large stainless jugs. Unfortunately they didn't keep one set of jugs for tea and one for coffee with the result that the tea always had the taste of coffee.

 

[WesternLancer]

And [off topic] those very nice etched wine glasses.
I seem to remember they served coffee and tea from large stainless jugs. Unfortunately they didn't keep one set of jugs for tea and one for coffee with the result that the tea always had the taste of coffee.

Should have been cleaning them with Stills Powder (as per my earlier post) to prevent that I suspect.