Daniel Puddicombe’s DownMain
EXPERT ANALYSIS OF THE ISSUES AFFECTING TODAY’S MAIN LINE CHARTER SCENE
“‘CASTLES’, CLIMBING hills everywhere” is how Vintage Trains’ chairman Michael Whitehouse described the initial 2024 programme to me. As we trailed in SR550, the highlight is Clun Castle recreating the 1964 Ian Allan ‘1Z48’ railtour; however, the rest of the programme is worth covering in the column in more detail.
Perhaps most interesting is the decision to run ‘Shakespeare Express’ trains from Derby, Leicester and Worcester. “We can advertise in Derby, Leicester and Worcester but we thought it would be better to advertise and say, ‘You can get on in your hometown’ and see how it goes. Who is not going to like going for two hours, chimney ‐first up Lickey to Hatton, and then two hours back again for £45?” Michael remarked to me, referring to the planned route of the ex-Worcester train. At the moment, VT is dipping its toe into the expansion of ‘SE’ starting points, with one train from each town (Derby on May 26, Worcester on June 30, and Leicester on July 14), though this could expand if the trial proves to be successful.
“If the Derby, Leicester and Worcester trains take off, we want space to repeat them in the second half of the year at the end of the summer season,” Michael said, as he explained to me that the Birmingham-Stratford trips are proving to be increasingly popular: “We already know the October half-term ‘Shakespeare’ works, so we’ve got that in the programme and we may well expand it. Because the market is ever-changing and nobody knows what’s happening, we want to be as flexible as we can.”
Reflecting on the rest of the special trains market, Michael said the ‘Shakespeare Express’ is “converting itself to a dining train, so it is over-popular in dining and tourist class is less popular”. When we spoke on October 23, the previous day’s trains had 95 dining passengers – compared with an average of 75 – and it is fair to say that the middle of October isn’t exactly peak tourism season.
In an aim to address that imbalance, the company is introducing £15 return tickets on the afternoon service from Stratford, perhaps off the back of the limited number of £10 tickets it sold this year.
“Over time we’ll reduce the number of carriages, but at the moment we need to fill them. We’ve just started getting the coach market. We’ve had some of them back in the summer and, historically, tourist class has been half-full with coach parties, so we hope that comes back fully,” Michael added.
Elsewhere, Vintage Trains is holding its tourist prices at £99 per ticket for bookings made before January 31, with prices rising to £129 thereafter. “We need to keep on growing the market and the best way to do that is to keep on
