First-class fun
It was exciting, cheap and adventurous – a few days in an old train carriage, parked in beautiful countryside. Historian Kathryn Ferry celebrates the heyday of the camping coach, and discovers that you can still stay on a train today
Glamping may feel like a very 21st-century phenomenon but the idea of camping-made-easy has actually been around for more than 100 years.
During the 1890s, people started buying up old railway carriages to convert them into seaside holiday homes, and from 1933 the railway companies themselves began to exploit this trend. In that year, London & North Eastern Railway (LNER) launched its first camping coaches, a facility, it said, that could just as easily be dubbed “camping deluxe”.
British leisure habits witnessed real change in the 1930s as rising living standards allowed more people to take an annual holiday. Alongside this was a new appreciation of healthy living and outdoor activities. It was the decade when the Youth Hostelling Association was founded and sunbathing became fashionable. Rambling, hiking and cycling proved popular ways of working on a tan, as did a visit to the open-air pool or lido.
At the seaside, traditional landladies had competition from new holiday camps. Whereas these gloried in communal entertainment, sport and games, camping coaches offered a more peaceful, do-it-yourself experience. According to The Yorkshire Post in June 1934, “the idea caught on tremendously, and the instant popularity surprised even some of the sponsors of the scheme”. The LNER received 6,000 booking applications for 1935, although they only had 65 converted coaches available over the 25-week season. Four years later, and with all four British railway companies