South East Lancashire Community Rail Partnership is pleased to announce a new Food, Drink and Rail History blog, researched and written by Community Rail Officer Emily Oldfield. Hosted as a dedicated tab on the website, the blog will be a dedicated place to explore a people’s food culture – a communal history of food and drink, and how it has impacted, as well as been influenced by, rail.
Trains have ultimately transformed what we have eaten over time, accelerating trade, influencing agricultural patterns and even aspects of availability such as making coastal produce such as fish much more readily accessible to landlocked cities. The blog will explore the plentiful connections between rail transport, food and drink – providing a refreshing angle of exploring heritage and involving many community connections along the way. It will also uncover what was eaten on trains and transport over time… the definitive ‘on-the-go’ food, so to speak.
Ultimately, the subject of food and drink is personal and evocative. We all have to eat and drink, and we all have our own opinions on it; likes, dislikes, appetites. The universality of the subject makes it an important and accessible lens through which public history and rail travel can be explored – and hopefully an enjoyable journey too! History local to the Community Rail Partnership will be considered, as well as further afield.
The blog will be regularly updated with features, focus items of local recipes/dishes, interviews and archival research. Much of this will also feature in Emily’s schedule of food and rail heritage talks, details of which will feature here and on the blog. The introductory post on the blog itself will give readers a flavour of the content to come and the value of community input too.
