Having been a regular train traveller to and from Cornwall for many years, I have always had something of a love-hate relationship with Great Western Railways and its predecessors – even before I started using them to travel between Oxford and London.

It is always a pleasure to get on the Paddington–Penzance sleeper, to be greeted by staff – old friends – who were working on the service when our now student-age children were still toddlers. On the other hand, when you need to get back upcountry (especially on a Sunday) a visit to the ‘Delay Repay’ website is to be expected, with diversion via the uniquely bleak Bristol Parkway an ever-present threat.

GWR’s Oxford–Paddington service was entirely scuppered last week as Network Rail installed a new bridge near the station, as part of ongoing upgrade works. So it was especially hard to recall the romance of rail as I tried to get to a friend’s leaving do on a crowded Marylebone service. But attending an event in the Sutro Room on Staircase 7 later in the week reminded me of a different era.

John Sutro studied at Trinity between 1921 and 1925. He became a film producer in the 1940s and served on the jury of the Berlin International Film Festival, also writing occasionally for the theatre. His wife Gillian was an actress, model and journalist and generously bequeathed her estate and papers to the College. The room was named in their honour and opened by Princess Alexandra in 2005.

John was one of the ‘bright young things’ of the 1920s and mixed with the likes of Evelyn Waugh and the Mitford sisters. In 1923 he created the Oxford University Railway Club. Far from the image of trainspotters today, this was a mobile dining society for the social elite of the time. Its inaugural meeting took place on the Penzance–Aberdeen express, on which Sutro had reserved a saloon car for a lavish white-tie dinner.

In his Memoirs of an Aesthete, the writer and scholar Harold Acton recalled that:

“The chef had evidently taken a special interest in its preparation, and it was served on spotless napery. Wine lent a Horatian charm to the scenery, and the train serenaded us as we discussed the developments of travel since Stephenson’s Rocket… All too soon we arrived at Leicester, where the station bar received us with open arms. For twenty minutes we sipped rare liqueurs, Grand Marnier and green Chartreuse now long extinct. The return journey was devoted to oratory.”

Acton added of John:

“He had a deeply personal affection for the British railway companies and a feeling for British trains and their affinities that was alternatively lyrical, ethical, aesthetic, practical and patriotic. Stationmasters, stewards and railway porters beamed upon him, and this warm glow communicated itself even to the locomotive”. Whether he would have warmed similarly to the available services and rolling stock of today must be a matter of conjecture.