Well Researched.,,
A clearly well researched account of the history of British luxury train travel from the opulent Golden Age through to the present day. Rich in detail and accompanied by many photographs, newspapers clippings and advertisements of each age. It’s an altogether fascinating and enjoyable read.

I really enjoyed reading this book. The author has done a lot of lot of research on luxury train travel in England from Victorian times to the present. Historical illustrations are also included. Enjoy the armchair railway journey.

Luxury Train travel fascinates me this book was perfect for me.Traveling in the uk on these wonderful trains captures my imagination takes me on an exotic vacation in my mind,Really enjoyed this book. #netgalley#penn&sword.

A look at luxury train travel mostly focusing on the UK from the 1860s to today.A few mentions of other train lines in the world. But most of the focus is on luxury travel across the UK. I reccommend for those who have an interest in rail history and English history.

Livery Railway Travel is a fantastic and interesting book. It is well written and really descriptive.

I am a rail enthusiast with a passion for history, so this book hit the mark perfectly for me. The author, Martyn Pring, did a masterful job covering the history of luxury rail travel in the United Kingdom from the 1860s to today. I like that he included information about the food served, as well as the magnificent station hotels. The book is well-researched, engrossing, and very thorough. The photographs, newspaper articles, and advertising posters that illustrate it make the book even more appealing. The amount of detail may be a bit overwhelming to some casual readers, and the writing is a bit awkward in a few places, but overall, I found this a very enjoyable read.

For those of us who have a rather romanticised perhaps even fantasised view of railways, luxury rail travel is a notion that appears very near the heart of it. Therefore such a book which even though it devotes its later pages to the present day redefinition is a homage to the golden days of the late Victorian and Edwardian era which witnessed such luxury travel as an integral part of a normal timetable instead of being the preserve as like today of specialist tour operators.

Firstly the book defines what is meant by luxury then shows how with the assistance of the patronage of royalty and the development of tourism to previously little trod parts of the UK the competing private companies were ever eager to outdo each other by promoting and providing luxury and opulence. This coincided with a rapid change in the social structure caused by industrialisation and a new flourishing middle and upper middle class.

This book I'm sure will not only please the train buff but also the general reader as there are many photographs, newspaper articles and those all important advertising posters (an art form in itself) that bring an added resonance to the text. Coach development, food and associated features like the great Gothic station hotels are all covered and by the end of the book the reader I'm sure will be seeking the relevant tour operators to experience if only for a day what such a feeling of traveling on a railway in luxury is actually like.

I'm fascinated by trains and this was an excellent and well researched history book.
i found it engrossing and informative, a very good read.
Recommended!
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

This is a book that successfully takes us from the early days of Thomas Cook and the train companies that were allowed to ferry Queen Victoria around (as long as the train stopped for her to dress and undress for meals, and not speed over 25mph at night for her nerves), and from open fires in the first ever Pullman kitchens, up to the current world of £1500-a-night treks round Scotland and the UK and beyond, to almost private carriages on some deluxe trains. But while such detail may be very pleasant to read about, it's distilled from a lot of specialist stuff here – sociology, economics and a heck of a lot more come into the story of luxury on the railways. And while I'm giving this book a star rating that shows its depth and quality for the specialist, I think the average reader would wish for a better, more accommodating approach. If the Midland Mainline to Scotland was the best and poshest, wherefore did it end and what did that mean for the people running it and using it? To perhaps too much extent the people have been taken out of these pages and it's all about the engines and tracks.

That layman may well find the later chapters of more interest, concerning as it does the recent times and the current industry, but that actually reads like a press release from Japan too often. The book offers little concession when it comes to all the lines' abbreviations and so on, either. So while I seem thoroughly on the attack against this book, I repeat that it's getting a strong mark because for people I know who like their trains history, this would go down very well. They get all the ins and outs of different services, and extended appendices covering even more detail. So this is a clear and solid everyday purchase for those spotters thus inclined, and by no means a one-off luxury, and while a couple of sentences here and there really are awkward to parse with the author's grammar, this is very well put together. Four and a half stars.

A look at train trail - a focus in the UK from the 1860s to today. Some mentions of other rails in the world. But is a look at luxury travel across the UK. Good for those who have an interest in rail history and English history.

Intriguing and well written.

Long fascinated by the glamour and luxury of early railway travel, I was excited to see a book fully dedicated to the subject. Pring is clearly a fellow enthusiast, and that love for the subject matter comes through in the text, making for an infinitely readable piece of nonfiction.

Pring does an admirable job of presenting his information in a thorough and complete manner that befits narrative nonfiction: Dense and informative but never dry.

This book focuses solely on British railway travel, and I’d love to see Pring take on the same topic for either continental Europe or America in this future.