Any ideas what Romic are going to do with their HST which I believe is at Burton On Trent. We had a trip on it to shildon earlier this year, but not seen it since.
They have 2 return trips from Paddington - Long Marston in for summer this year for the Rail Live event.
www.excursionsbyrail.co.uk
RTC seems to be plugging the excursions hole left by UKR’s detailed exploration of Quail maps. Quite a few traditional destinations for £115/120 in their 2026 programme including steam at that price, all with WCRC as the operator.
Does anyone know what the times of these trips are, please? I've looked at the pages given by the link above, but nowhere does it say any times - unless I'm not looking in the right place!They have 2 return trips from Paddington - Long Marston in for summer this year for the Rail Live event.
Rail Live Express
Scroll down towards the bottom of the page, provisional timings are there
It belongs to Eastern Rail Services not RTC - It might be available for hire though.
I think yes but it would need substantial numbers of dining passengers to make it work. You need the 6 dining cars to pay for the 2 carriages of cheap seats surely.
How are they going to do that? It is not 1987.
Ah, thanks - I didn't go far enough towards the bottom of the page ... doh!
Which looks to be selling very poorly - I looked at the available seats from the seating plan on one of the days, and I reckon less than 20 tickets had been sold. Going slightly off topic though as this train is being managed by Excursions by Rail/Bishop Trains rather than UK Railtours...They have 2 return trips from Paddington - Long Marston in for summer this year for the Rail Live event.
Rail Live Express
Unfortunately, rising costs to the operators mean rising costs and limited options for the consumer.
It is booked to do this judging by the photo used - https://bookings.excursionsbyrail.co.uk/events/excursionsbyrail/1976072
The more usual discussion in this regard is whether GBR will continue to cater for charter trains. Although that tends to come from the usual suspects who also spent the entirety of covid telling us all how covid would be the end of charters and heritage railways. You know, those people with such a jolly outlook on life
Why wouldn’t charters continue? They have no pathing rights so use genuinely spare capacity, just like ad hoc freight and all of the rolling stock transits that occur. There’s very big money tied up in the top end of the posh railtours market too, plus the odd (numerically only of courseThe more usual discussion in this regard is whether GBR will continue to cater for charter trains. Although that tends to come from the usual suspects who also spent the entirety of covid telling us all how covid would be the end of charters and heritage railways. You know, those people with such a jolly outlook on life
) operator with political connections.
I agree which is why I made the point of indicating where this discussion tended to eminate from.Why wouldn’t charters continue? They have no pathing rights so use genuinely spare capacity, just like ad hoc freight and all of the rolling stock transits that occur. There’s very big money tied up in the top end of the posh railtours market too, plus the odd (numerically only of course
Charters won’t disappear but I’d bet that another operator or two will be in the disappearing companies thread this year or next.
Excursions by rail haven’t been advertising it on social media, it’s all been the 20th of June tour
Although that one is more niche than most tours owing to the purpose being a trip to that Rail Live show.
What non enthusiast is going to pay £135 to go Southend or Great Yarmouth slower than a coach or normal public transport can take them? A coach trips are normally only about £40 or £50 including whatever the attraction is
Presumably the sort who pay more than £135 for trains operated by the likes Statesman Rail, which is exactly as you describe and seems to run quite regularly
There's an article about it in the current Trackside. I don't have it anymore but the basic gist as I remember it was that the Bill for GBR doesn't specifically mention charters. It doesn't say they can't run, but it also doesn't say they can run. So charter operators want reassurance. There was a Parliamentary Committee convened last month about it, attended by LSL and WCR and chaired by Peter Hendy. The outcome was that it's now too late to get it amended by the House of Commons but they will try and get it amended by the House of Lords when it gets to them.Why wouldn’t charters continue? They have no pathing rights so use genuinely spare capacity, just like ad hoc freight and all of the rolling stock transits that occur. There’s very big money tied up in the top end of the posh railtours market too, plus the odd (numerically only of course
Charters won’t disappear but I’d bet that another operator or two will be in the disappearing companies thread this year or next.
I think that's because Excursion by Rail are more acting as booking agents for this trip rather than being the promoter. Given that this is an industry event, I would expect a large proportion of attendees will have 'priv', so they - or their employer - will probably not want to fork out £99 or £189 to travel on this train from London/Reading.
Those merrymakers were able to run because they were (in theory) using marginal resources - locos and crew available, for example , because coal traffic dropped off in the summer or the steelworks was on its two week shutdown. Coaches were spare either because they were commuter stock not needed on a Saturday or were “free” during the week as they were needed for weekend traffic. Neither of those situations pertains any more, coupled with the fact that there are far fewer paths than there used to be at times when people might actually want them.
As is the 11th July "Another Chocolate Flake" which I had presumed to be a possible 99 tour based on the name
I guess the timings couldn't be sorted, as that would have been one hell of a long day considering there is only one path available for charter trains between Shrewsbury & Machynlleth due to the single line sections, and I'm sure that even requires TfW to cancel a Shrewsbury - Aberystwyth service to accommodate.There was also a tour from Great Yarmouth to Pwllheli that I was looking forward to. Firstly, it was in May around the time of my birthday and then it was moved to July.
Looking at their website it seems to have disappeared completely which is a shame.
I bow to your greater knowledge on the lines around North Wales, only ever done South Wales myself, this tour would of been new line clearance.
Interestingly, Vintage Trains seem to have found another path departing Shrewsbury 0815 for their Aberystwyth trip on 5 Sep.
That's going to be a early start even just from brum, add in a few pick ups and the run round, wouldn't be surprised if it starts pre 6am
05:50 off Dorridge is the provisional departure time. The planned timings give nearly 6 hours in Aberystwyth though
www.ukrailtours.com
Presumably something with a pantograph.New tour
The Ancient Kingdom August 22nd
It weirdly doesn’t mention traction, if anyone knows anything about that please shareThe Ancient Kingdom – UK Railtours
