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The Food Programme

Off the Rails: The Story of Train Food

The Food Programme

BBC

Arts, Food

4.4943 Ratings

🗓️ 19 July 2024

⏱️ 43 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

As the summer holidays kick off and people plan for journeys far and near, Sheila explores what food is provided on trains and at train stations across the country. A new report by the Office for Road and Rail suggests passengers pay around 10 per cent more for food inside stations, where catering leases often roll over automatically with limited opportunities for new food businesses to enter the market. Sheila finds out who the biggest players are in rail food and speaks to a range of people from station operators, food retailers and train companies to find out: is train food as bad as it once was?

Not many people spend their lives in constant motion, but travel writer Caroline Eden is one of them. Sheila shares a train picnic with Caroline on the train line leading up to Scotland's walking country, and hears stories of food shared and meals eaten on remote routes during Caroline's travels through Central Asia and beyond. Pasties are one of Caroline's favourite journey foods, and she's not alone. From the tin miners of Cornwall's past to their omnipresence at stations today, pasties might just be one of the UK's longest-standing foods eaten on the move.

Sheila also hears from travel correspondent Simon Calder, reporting from a station cafe on the Swiss-Italian border, with his perspective on how train catering has changed and his top tops for eating well on the move. How does food on trains compare in other countries and is there anything we can learn from the food cultures of others? Tokyo food tour host Yukari Sakamoto explains the tradition of Japan's Bento boxes, nutritious, freshly-cooked boxed meals bought at stations and eaten on trains across the country.

Presented by Sheila Dillon and produced by Nina Pullman for BBC Audio in Bristol.

Transcript

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0:00.0

He is Brian Cox.

0:02.8

Hello.

0:03.3

And he understands science.

0:05.4

I'm Robin Ince and I don't understand it quite so much.

0:09.0

Could he tell us something about the nature of matter?

0:11.3

Nope.

0:12.0

Okay, good.

0:13.2

Together we'll be joined by a collection of experts and non-expert guests.

0:18.6

What's going on?

0:19.8

Don't you know.

0:21.6

Taking a look at some of the most wonderful things

0:24.4

in the scientific world.

0:25.9

Science with Funny Bits, The Infinite Monkey Cage

0:29.3

on Radio 4 and BBC Sounds.

0:44.0

BBC Sounds. B. C Sounds, Music Radio Podcasts. If you're with any please copy, contact to a beer drink, please, very nice and alcoholic beverages.

0:46.0

So once again, your catering is now available from the very rear

0:51.0

of this service today in Coach F. I'm looking forward to serving you very soon.

0:55.0

Thank you.

0:57.0

They were looking for breakfast.

0:59.0

I just thought, oh gosh, don't stop here.

1:02.0

Because there's nothing really is there?

1:04.4

We did find quite a disparity in some of that pricing for some fairly familiar

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