British Rail sandwich inBritish popular culture was the complementarysandwich sold for consumption on passenger trains of the formerBritish Rail (BR), during the period ofnationalisation from 1948 to 1994.Comedic references to the sandwiches established it as emblematic of the unappetising fare then available aboard Great Britain'srailway service.
In 2017 the British sandwich industry was worth £8bn a year. Thisconvenience food consists of a chilled packaged sandwich and was first served in 1980 byMarks & Spencer (M&S). Not meant to be fancy, the usual sandwich filling may be plain salmon and cucumber, egg and cress, or defrosted prawns. Triangles of white bread in plastic cartons still stand for a way of living and working.[1]
According to former BR caterer Myrna Tuddenham, the poor reputation of BR sandwiches likely derived from the practice of keeping the sandwiches "under glass domes on the counters in refreshment rooms until the corners turned up".[2] Despite the many jokes at its expense, British Rail documents show that in 1993, its last full year as a public company, eight million sandwiches were sold.[3] Historian Keith Lovegrove wrote that it was "a sandwich of contradictions; it could be cold and soggy, or stale and hard, and the corners of theisosceles triangle-shaped bread would often curl up like the pages of a well-thumbedpaperback".[4]
The quality of food served on trains or at railway stations was a source of amusement long before the advent of British Rail, as evidenced by a humorous column in the October 1884 edition of theAmerican Railroad Journal:
The existence of the railway sandwich and its spread throughout the country has long been a source of terror to the people and of anxiety to the medical fraternity who have been able to cope with it successfully.[5]
The British Rail sandwich was often ridiculed onBritish radio andtelevision and in numerous books. An episode ofThe Goon Show entitled "The Collapse of the British Railway Sandwich System" was first broadcast on theBBC Home Service on 8 March 1954.[6] In 1972, the showMilligna (or Your Favourite Spike) included spoof news items, including "Long-missingVan Gogh ear found in a British Rail sandwich".[7]
In his bookQueuing for Beginners: The Story of Daily Life From Breakfast to Bedtime,Joe Moran describes the British Rail sandwich as "a metaphor for social decline since it became a running joke onThe Goon Show".[8]Bill Bryson wrote inNotes from a Small Island: "I can remember when you couldn't buy a British Rail sandwich without wondering if this was your last act before a long period on a life-support machine."[9]
The British Rail sandwich has been used as a negative point of comparison for other ready-to-serve meals, especially regarding transportation in the United Kingdom,[10] and representative of the negative effects of British nationalisation of industry in the middle of the 20th century. A 1997 article inThe Independent referred to the sandwich as "an indictment of statist, bureaucratic corporations" privatised by Prime MinisterMargaret Thatcher, who had "swept asideJames Callaghan,prices and incomes policies and the British Rail sandwich".[11]
It has also been used as a negative point of comparison for poor service in general. In 1988,Investors Chronicle describedBritish Telecom's quality of service as "attracting the sort of public abuse once reserved for the British Rail sandwich".[12] In 2007,Sir Michael Bishop, then chairman of airlineBMI, wrote thatHeathrow Airport "now has the reputation formerly held by the British Rail sandwich".[13]
In 2001, theNational Railway Museum inYork discovered a November 1971 document featuring sandwich recipes, issued by Director of Rail Catering Bill Currie. The document states its aim to make BR meals "the best on the track" and describes the precise amount of sandwich filling to be placed on the sandwich. The recipe also specifies, in order to make the sandwiches attractive – and to be able to tell what was inside – at least a third of the filling be placed in the centre, so that when cut diagonally, the customer would see the contents.[2] Forluncheon meat and sardines, the filling should total two-thirds of an ounce of meat. On an egg andcress sandwich, each sandwich was to contain one-twelfth of apunnet of cress. The document was featured in a 2002 exhibition of the National Railway Museum, "British Rail – A Moving Story".[3] A typical ham sandwich would contain one slice of ham with another slice folded in half and placed diagonally over the first one.[14] When the sandwich was cut diagonally, it would make it appear that it contained three slices of ham; in reality, it only contained two.
InFrance, this kind of unappetising sandwich is named "sandwichSNCF" or "sandwichTGV", by assimilation with the quality of sandwiches sold in French trains, especiallyhigh-speed trains. In popular humour, this name refers to any bad, meagre and expensive ready-to-eat food. Since 1 March 2009, sandwiches sold onboard TGVs have become cheaper.[15]
In Greece, these kinds of sandwiches are calledΚαραβίσια (karavisia) orκαραβίσιος καφές (literally "lobster coffee"), anidiomatic term which translates roughly to "something that is on a ship"; it refers to low-quality (but very expensive) sandwiches, like those sold on passenger ships.[16]