Saphos Trains 2020

I notice some tours have started to appear on the website for the new year including 2 trips around the little north western and some of the now familiar routes.
https://saphostrains.com/

 

So the early booking discount, which I reckon applied to nearly all the bookings, has gone and Saphos is at the £95 standard £145 first price point next year.

 

4 fellsmans instead of 3!

 

Which I suppose really shows that whatever we may think about the price of railtours, this is pretty much the price point even if you are a TOC in your own right.

 

No sign of early bird booking either if I'm not mistaken? Maybe that will be added at a later date...
Apologies 30567 hadn’t read your full post.

 

I’m hoping the Lakelanders make a return again as they were both fully booked this year

 

Hopefully, but maybe the very late return or very short turn around time in Carlisle makes them too difficult to do again.

 

I'm hopeful og the Bristol - Weymouths again, as that is a lovely route to travel along. We shall see...

 

I see that 60007 Sir Nigel Gresley is among the locomotives rostered to work the Saphos trips in 2020.

 

Some new one-off trips for next year as well, such as The Great Western Envoy and the Severn Valley Enterprise, as well as a double-headed trip from Bristol to Plymouth in August. Yes the Early Bird fares have gone but the expanded tour programme, coupled with the tantalising possibility of haulage by 60007, is creating a very attractive prospect.

 

Hopefully some of their MK1's start rolling out too !

 

That SVR run is a real standout, with plenty of unusual track for the highlighter to mark off (Shenstone? Probably last done by the Panniers). I think I could just about live with an A/C Mk. 2 with itineraries like that.

 

Interesting to see that they have advertised the whole program till the end of August 2020. No doubt hoping to capture bookings by being first to market so to speak. Certainly an increase in number and variation of tours as well - you would say the future looks bright for LSL.

 

I may book myself on to the SVR tour, that looks like good fun

 

There are actually some tours for the final four months of the year now. No Bristol- Weymouths (as yet) but the Sussex Belle in Setpember is an interesting innovation - steam to Brighton, diesel to Eastbourne and then return via Hastings, Ashford & Maidstone East. I wonder if Saphos has spoken to Network Rail about the bridge between Hastings and Ore on which restrictions were imposed a few years back, with steam being totally banned. Perhaps something has been done about the problem, whatever it may have been.

 

Here's hoping about Ore bridge, because it seems Saphos have noticed the missing bits in my Baker Atlas! There's about four I'm interested in doing, but two will get booked over the next few months. Now to save some cash...

 

Brilliant, not had an A4 down south for a while

 

Like less than two weeks ago !

 

Program for all the way to Next December now up.