These gently swaying restaurants have always been a classy public place where even grubby standard class passengers could taste first-class treatment. As a waiter on the East Coast service recalls, lone diners would complain about being seated together, but once the wine started flowing they would all be chatting and swapping business cards. “The deals that got done in this car,” he sighs.

Patrick Barkham sums up the experience of travelling in style on the East Coast Main Line. Sad that the dining cars are being shunted off the tracks in the new timetable.