Taking the racing line

Part 2 in our occasional series of retrospective photographs from the past 300 years of Ascot history looks back at a seemingly never-ending line of racegoers snaking towards the racecourse from Ascot train station in the 1930s.

Since the 1830s, when the railways opened up the race meeting to the masses, the journey by train to Ascot has been an important and exciting start to the eager racegoer’s day.

In 1873, the Times wrote “Never has the South Western Railway brought down such a heavy and fashionably filled train as that which …dispersed its contents over an Ascot radius of some half dozen miles or more, while the afternoon trains on the Great Western have filled the Royal Borough with…bustle and excitement.”