This photograph made me laugh. It looks like a Mock Tudor pub, but it's actually a Southern Railway Tavern Car, circa 1947. They called it "At the Sign of the White Hart"; here you could enjoy a pewter tankard of bitter, (or presumably a slice of gammon with pineapple?) as you steamed through the Surrey countryside towards Waterloo or Victoria.
The gel at the front looks a bit like Celia Johnson in Brief Encounter. She's got her foot foward like a Harrod's model. I bet my bottom dollar the chap at the back (missing only a manly pipe clenched between his teeth) is a bogus Wing Commander and drives an MG.
I would love to know what the waiter is serving up through the hatch. Steak and Kidney pie? A grapefruit half, garnished with a glacé cherry? Dover Sole?
Brief Encounter, directed by David Lean, script by Noel Coward, 1945


