This is a Thinking Aloud Podcast from the BBC and for more details in our terms of use and much,

much more about thinking aloud. Go to our website at BBC.co. UK. In the old days, the most important thing about traveling on a train was securing your very own compartment.

And on trains with no corridor, this meant that once you've done that, you lend well out of the window on the platform side so as to deter any other entrance.

On corridor trains you sat in the far corner of your compartment and gurned at any passenger

who had the temerity to peer through the glass of your door.

My own childhood desire for isolation, a chance for a quick wood-bind meant that I always looked enviously into the

compartments which were nearly always the emptiest on any train those labeled

ladies only.

Well, that label, Lady's Only seemed to belong to the distant past.

Until the end of last month, when the Daily Mail ran the headline

Corbin plans women only train carriages to curb sex pests on public transport.

Well the reality was a little less dramatic.

Corbin merely said that in his concern to make public transport safer, he would consult

with women and hear their views on whether women only carriages would be welcome.

But it really was all the

encouragement we needed to ring up Simon Abernethy who had previously

appeared on thinking aloud you may remember talking about his PhD thesis on the

historical relationship between social class and

commuting. There was a thesis and we remember this it included a chapter entitled

The History of Ladies Only Railway Carriages.

Well, Simon, who's a PhD student in history at Emmanuel College,

Cambridge, now once again joins me in the studio.

...