British Rail sandwich
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| Course | Main course |
|---|---|
| Place of origin | United Kingdom |
| Main ingredients | Bread |
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In British humour, the phrase British Rail sandwich refers to sandwiches sold for consumption on passenger trains of the former British Rail (BR). Its use principally arose in British popular culture through comedic references to the food item as emblematic of the unappetising fare available aboard Great Britain's railway service during the period of nationalisation from 1948 to 1994.
According to former BR caterer Myrna Tuddenham, the poor reputation of BR sandwiches likely owed to the practice of keeping the sandwiches "under glass domes on the counters in refreshment rooms until the corners turned up". 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. 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 the isosceles triangle-shaped bread would often curl up like the pages of a well-thumbed paperback".
Sandwiches served on trains were a source of amusement long before the advent of British Rail, as evidenced by a humorous column in the October 1884 edition of the American Railway 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.
The British Rail sandwich was often ridiculed on British radio and television and in numerous books. An episode of The Goon Show entitled The Collapse of the British Railway Sandwich System was first broadcast on the BBC Home Service on 8 March 1954. In 1972, the show Milligna (or Your Favourite Spike) included spoof news items, including "Long-missing Van Gogh ear found in a British Rail sandwich".
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