Holiday traffic at Paddington Station, London, 7 August 1943.

Passengers boarding a train for a Bank Holiday outing. During the war taking a holiday was more difficult than it had been in peace time. People had to work longer hours and had little spare money due to high taxes. Many public transport services were restricted; people had to make the most of public holidays to enjoy themselves. From an archive of about 400,000 photographic negatives from various British Railways and constituent companies' photographic collections, formerly known as the OPC (Oxford Publishing Company) Collection.