Football Specials Info Request

[bullensultra]

Hi Guys and Gals,

Sorry to clutter your forum, I am a freelance writer doing a piece (for my own amusement more than anything) on the Football Special services and chartered club travel (My team Everton had one called 'The Blue Streak' apparently) and from what I can gather they are still used for finals at Wembley but other than that there is very little information I can get, can anyone provide me or point me to as much info as possible, who operates/operated them? When they started and stopped, which clubs chartered them etc? Any info at all would be appreciated.

Again apologies for cluttering the forum!

Thanking you in advance!

 

[tbtc]

Hi Guys and Gals,

Sorry to clutter your forum, I am a freelance writer doing a piece (for my own amusement more than anything) on the Football Special services and chartered club travel (My team Everton had one called 'The Blue Streak' apparently) and from what I can gather they are still used for finals at Wembley but other than that there is very little information I can get, can anyone provide me or point me to as much info as possible, who operates/operated them? When they started and stopped, which clubs chartered them etc? Any info at all would be appreciated.

Again apologies for cluttering the forum!

Thanking you in advance!

Generally they are run by Charter Companies (firms who bought "life expired" coaches/ engines to run heritage/ preserved/ railtour services).

However there are some examples of TOCs running such services (Arriva Trains Wales do rugby specials to Cardiff a handful of times a year, WMSR ran a Chiltern class 168 from Shrewsbury to Wembley when Shrewsbury reached the play off finals a couple of years ago etc).

The cost and complication tends to stop these things from happening - there was a plan for Peterborough to go to Old Trafford for the play offs last year (?) and something like £15,000 was quoted by Stagecoach (EMT), so the service never ran.

Oddly it tends to be smaller teams who have these services (the only Scottish examples I can think of in recent years were Dundee, Dunfermline and Queen of the South - although neither of the Old Firm would need a train service for a Hampden final, to be fair).

I think that you can blame a few things for their demise - railway privatisation/ police/ alcohol...

(though if my club - Berwick Rangers - ever got to a final, I'd want to travel on one!)

 

[richw]

Fgw put on a hst special for Plymouth argyle to go to cheltenham earlier this season. It was well publicized locally. Fgw also put on a special to exeter city for argyle fans last season. Also well publicised locally.

Sent from my HTC Sensation Z710e using Tapatalk

 

[Ivo]

Nothing written by an Everton fan is ever clutter Nice to see there are more than two of us (myself and Gathursty)!

I know London Midland have done them for Aston Villa and Birmingham City playing at Wembley, but otherwise I don't know of much. I suppose you could argue about the Saturday journeys between Manchester Piccadilly and Manchester United Football Ground Halt (or whatever it's called these days) as well, operated by Northern Rail as additional capacity between Manchester and old Trafford.

 

[Minilad]

Or are you talking about the football specials run by BR in the 70s and 80s. Cheap fares. Old stock. Quite often tasty locos !!

Happy days

 

[ushawk]

When Portsmouth got to the FA Cup final a few years back, Southern did 3 journeys between Portsmouth Harbour and London Bridge, to connect with the Jubilee Line to Wembley Park. When Brighton played Portsmouth in the FA cup last season, Southern also ran an extra journey each way between Portsmouth and Preston Park (when Brighton were at the Withdean).

Now Southern have additional matchday services via Falmer for the Amex, but nothing more than that, no additionals were added for local derbys between Brighton and Pompey/So'ton.

 

[38Cto15E]

bullen
In the 60s and 70s British rail ran a huge amount of football specials. I remember in 1963 when Leicester City played Norwich City at Carrow Road in the 6th round of the FA Cup there were about 5 footex's from Leicester.
The front forecourt of the station was closed to vehicles and passengers queued up in rows depending on the colour of their tickets, pink, buff, yellow, blue etc It did also state the departure time if anyone was colour blind, these tickets had to be booked in advance.
By the time the 1970s came around many footex's had two or three uniformed police travelling on these trains.
I think the idea was to keep the 'hooligan' element off the service trains, this didn't work too well and Portsmouth FC had the 0655 crew (it wasn't 6.55 though) and I think West Ham had the Inter City firm, BR express trains being known as Inter City trains.
I was guard on an Everton supporters train in the early 70s when they played either Ipswich or Norwich and a policeman escorted the catering trolley through the train to make sure nothing untoward happened to it. Good times.

 

[Cherry_Picker]

Club Wembley charter trains to games for their "gold service" members. There are always one or two from Birmingham Moor Street to Wembley Stadium which arent advertised in public timetables and appear as charter on information screens at Moor Street. Class 67 stock has been used recently.

 

[WCML]

There were several services for the FA Cup Semi and Final last season.

There was a special from Stoke that went along the Chiltern line down to Wembley for both the semi final and the final. It was apparently made up of old mark 2 and 3 stock, and was heavily criticised for lighting failures in some of the carriages, lack of refreshments and the exceptionally slow journey and overall poor service. The Super Off Peak travelcard that's available on a Saturday meant that a lot of supporters used the Virgin service anyway.

They also deployed the Pretendolino as a relief train to Stoke only from Euston after the final.

I don't see a reason why they don't run football specials on Boxing Day. Hardly any other stock on the lines and it can't be that much of an inconvenience to run a few trains. Eg, boxing day this year, Wolves play Bolton. They could easily fill a 220 and run it direct from Wolverhampton to Horwich Parkway, park it up at Bolton during the match and run it back again.

 

[MidnightFlyer]

Chelsea FC hire out a train for fans on quite a few occasions. I think it was also done for Blackburn fans and the 2001 League Cup Final in Cardiff.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

There were several services for the FA Cup Semi and Final last season.

There was a special from Stoke that went along the Chiltern line down to Wembley for both the semi final and the final. It was apparently made up of old mark 2 and 3 stock, and was heavily criticised for lighting failures in some of the carriages, lack of refreshments and the exceptionally slow journey and overall poor service. The Super Off Peak travelcard that's available on a Saturday meant that a lot of supporters used the Virgin service anyway.

They also deployed the Pretendolino as a relief train to Stoke only from Euston after the final.

I don't see a reason why they don't run football specials on Boxing Day. Hardly any other stock on the lines and it can't be that much of an inconvenience to run a few trains. Eg, boxing day this year, Wolves play Bolton. They could easily fill a 220 and run it direct from Wolverhampton to Horwich Parkway, park it up at Bolton during the match and run it back again.

What about the cost for paying for signalman etc? Further, Horwich Pkwy is for Bolton Wanderers FC, and I'm not sure what you'd do with the train for 120 or so mins - Longsight maybe?

 

[TGVDUDE]

Fgw have used hsts for games between Portsmouth & swansea, seeing rare track for the hsts, aswell as when cardiff reached wembley they put on 3/4 extra hsts, thinking about it I'm sure when swansea were promoted they had non stop extras, through south Wales from swansea with hsts

 

[WCML]

Chelsea FC hire out a train for fans on quite a few occasions. I think it was also done for Blackburn fans and the 2001 League Cup Final in Cardiff.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---


What about the cost for paying for signalman etc? Further, Horwich Pkwy is for Bolton Wanderers FC, and I'm not sure what you'd do with the train for 120 or so mins - Longsight maybe?

I know. Couldn't it be moved back down to Bolton and park it on platform 3 or is that solely for the Clitheroe line?

What about Oxford Road? Theres a bay platform there isnt there?

 

[Chew Chew]

I think the idea was to keep the 'hooligan' element off the service trains, this didn't work too well and Portsmouth FC had the 0655 crew (it wasn't 6.55 though)

The Pompey Casuals are the 657 Crew.

 

[MidnightFlyer]

Platform 3 is the main westbound platform. Oxford Rd p5 is used for about 40 mins an hour by Liverpool trains.

 

[AndyHA]

Back in the 1970s . We at Ipswich Station used to organise and run Football Specials almost every fortnight to coincide with Ipswich Town Football Club's away matches . Known as Blue Arrow Specials I seem to remember .
Often Class 37 hauled , a tractor for the tractor boys !

 

[Harlesden]

Is it reasonable to assume that the £15,000 quote mentioned by tbtc was something of a "premium" figure intended to cover the cost of cleaning out a train that might well be "soiled" in places. Presumably, if members of a respected transport forum for example wanted to hire a train to travel from A to B and back again, the cost would be considerably less.

 

[Essexman]

In the 70s & early 80s there used to be a special for virtually all West Ham away games out of London. They were run by BR but tickets sold by the club, though the Irons Travel Club. The trains were old stock with no buffet. By the late 70s a lot of West Ham fans were using service trains instead and hence the 'hooligan firm' became known as the ICF (Inter City Firm). When two for one offers such as 'Persil Tickets' were available we'd use those. A few clubs also ran specials to Barking for games at West Ham.

Sometimes BR used to run an extra train for supporters back to London after the match, probably to try to keep them of the service trains.

The last 'special' I went on was in 2001, when Virgin put on an extra train to Manchester for our FA Cup match (won 1.0 - Di Canio!!!), as it was not long after Hatfield normal trains wouldn't get there in time.

In recent years the only specials we've had have been to Cardiff for play off & FA Cup final. These were organised by a travel company and used very old stock.

Other than that, we get our own Jubilee Line train non stop from London Bridge to Canning Town after games at Millwall.

 

[tbtc]

Is it reasonable to assume that the £15,000 quote mentioned by tbtc was something of a "premium" figure intended to cover the cost of cleaning out a train that might well be "soiled" in places. Presumably, if members of a respected transport forum for example wanted to hire a train to travel from A to B and back again, the cost would be considerably less.

That's a good question.

At the time I tried to see if anyone could provide a breakdown of the figure that was being bandied about - how much of that was fuel/ staffing/ cost of organising it/ profit, but I don't remember seeing an answer.

 

[DarloRich]

GNER put on special trains for Darlo when we appeared in the play off finals in 96 & 2000. They were standard GNER Mkiv/91 sets basically running an extra Newcastle-Durham-Darlo-Northallerton-York-Kings Cross.

they were in the timetable as additional services and open to "normal people" but almost everyone on board were Darlo fans.

In 2000 there was a need for an extra train back north from Kings Cross as we played the match in a Friday night and the last train of the night left before the end of the game! The train got back to Darlo about 2am.

All of these trains were dry trains.

I also went on an NXEC extra for a Durham Cricket match at Lords. This was a Newcaslte-Durham-Darlo-York- Kings Cross and return extra. This was an HST set and was NOT a dry train

 

[50010 Monarch]

There were several services for the FA Cup Semi and Final last season.

There was a special from Stoke that went along the Chiltern line down to Wembley for both the semi final and the final. It was apparently made up of old mark 2 and 3 stock, and was heavily criticised for lighting failures in some of the carriages, lack of refreshments and the exceptionally slow journey and overall poor service. The Super Off Peak travelcard that's available on a Saturday meant that a lot of supporters used the Virgin service anyway.

They also deployed the Pretendolino as a relief train to Stoke only from Euston after the final.

I don't see a reason why they don't run football specials on Boxing Day. Hardly any other stock on the lines and it can't be that much of an inconvenience to run a few trains. Eg, boxing day this year, Wolves play Bolton. They could easily fill a 220 and run it direct from Wolverhampton to Horwich Parkway, park it up at Bolton during the match and run it back again.

The Bolton - Wolves match was actually on New Years Eve so travel by conventional train was available which is what we did.

There was in fact a special operated by Northern from Horwich P'way to Manchester Victoria after the match. It left Horwich P'way at 17.10 & called only at Bolton on the way to Manchester.

The traction was about as exciting as the match....a pair of 156's!

 

[WCML]

The Bolton - Wolves match was actually on New Years Eve so travel by conventional train was available which is what we did.

There was in fact a special operated by Northern from Horwich P'way to Manchester Victoria after the match. It left Horwich P'way at 17.10 & called only at Bolton on the way to Manchester.

The traction was about as exciting as the match....a pair of 156's!

Oh okay. I thought it was played on Boxing day. Thats heaped further misery on my rubbish example!

That football special really is a joke. I've been on it before but I didnt know whether it was still running as the last 2 times Ive been to the reebok Ive caught a TPE service.

I dont know why they put on the extra service to Victoria when most people want to go to Piccadilly. Ok, theres probably no available pathway into the through platforms at Piccadilly, but why not use the unit to strengthen a Stockport bound Northern service that goes through Piccadilly. That way, away fans arent kettled through Manchester City Centre and the TPE service doesnt get so jammed.

 

[Tullideph]

Oddly it tends to be smaller teams who have these services (the only Scottish examples I can think of in recent years were Dundee, Dunfermline and Queen of the South - although neither of the Old Firm would need a train service for a Hampden final, to be fair).

Dundee United had one too for the 2010 final, although it was rather poorly publicised - I only got on it by sheer chance having gone down to the station to catch a regular service.

 

[YorkshireBear]

I went on a football special in jan 2008. Derby away in cup (for sheffield wednesday) there was an EMT (midland mainline livery) HST waiting in platforms that was running non stop to sheffield with SWFC fans only on the departure board. Was good, got a table seat for me and my mates.

 

[Bunting14]

When i followed Arsenal from my London home we had some interesting trips.

St Pancras to Wadsley Bridge for Sheff Wednesday
St Pancras to Small Heath via Wigston South and Nuneaton avoider for Birmingham C
Paddington to Hereford via Maindee Junction
Back from Leicester via Oakham and Corby