England: Tour confirmed, partly new program!
It took us a very long time to confirm all major parts of our British steam tour, but now all signals are on green.
On March, 7th, we start at the GCR and will stay here for 2 days of exclusive steam charters without any further train traffic on the beautiful, double-tracked main line. The steam locomotives 73156 and 6990 will be used for our photo trains (passenger & freight). The following weekend program proved to be the hardest nut to crack. Our first two standard gauge "candidates" had either no locomotive or no personnel available - a fact which was just seen after a few months of planning. Thereupon we wanted to visit two narrow-gauge railways - everything looked good there, until some "very important" club members thought that they had to renegotiate everything and increase their prices. Suddenly the signature of the superior was missing, and and and. In other words: as with Brexit, only in small.
Now we had to look for alternatives again, which is very difficult outside the season. Things turned into our favour and we will visit the famous railway museum in Didcot on Saturday: with 26 steam locomotives and also at least 1 locomotive for us under steam and night shots surely a place absolutely worth seeing. On Sunday we are at the "GWSR", the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Steam Railway. The GWSR runs diesel and steam trains, we are supported by local fans to take pictures in the right place at the right time!
Afterwards we go to the Severn Valley Railway (SVR) for 2 days. As with the GCR, we are exclusive guests at the SVR and our photo charters are the only trains those days: one freight and one passenger train each and the locomotives 2857 and 34046. The SVR offers excellent scenic photo spots - and since we are always on the train, we don't have any problems with the access to the photo spots which needs access to private ground of the farmers along the route.
All in all a really interesting event with a lot of steam. Even if we don't have so many rooms available in the hotels any more, we can still accept some bookings. Flights to Birmingham are also inexpensive (less than 300 €) - and if you don't feel like going with Tanago´s all-inclusive service with bus, hotel, meal, you can book the core railway program only! Read all details about the tour here.
