The train is a place of reading says Dr Bob Nicholson, Historian of Victorian Culture. Time spent on the train has always been used as a time to read. Today that might be on a smartphone, but before news apps, audio books and digital readers, rail travellers would buy newspapers, books and specifically edited journals and magazines designed for the rail traveller.
This platform economy led to the birth of platform bookstalls and newsagents, shops like WHSmith were born of the railway platform. But the rail network didn’t just give people time to read, it helped spread the news and information in a pre-digital era. A newspaper could be printed in London at night and be on a breakfast table in the northeast the next day.