Well, Timely Time traveller, your "modest rise" is, it would seem, a suitable "case" for celebration!

My travelling bag, besides carrying necessary sustenance for the body (I'm too mean to pay train buffet prices - especially for beer!) will have a copy of the day's Guardian, the latest copy of Classic Car magazine (I used to take it every month, but since I became an impoverished academic, I only buy it for train or bus journeys.)
If I take a book, it will be a history book, from which I will be researching my latest set of lectures. But it is much more likely that I will have a pile of scripts to mark: I find the train is one of the best places of all for marking, because no-one interrupts me.