Flying Scotsman Main Line Railtours September 2026

Thinking outside the box. Which can only be a good thing as Flying Scotsman and Tornado have been woefully underused on the main line since there last overhauls, plus money in Vintage Trains pocket as well

 

That would surely depend on if the Rail Adventure recruitment mentioned by @26D_M is purely for steam loco movements or to run tours. If tours I tend to agree with his hypothesis that ERS stock is likely.
That of course may well confirm or disprove my belief that the vast majority of railtour pax these days (us nerds who inhabit places like this excluded of course) would be far happier with a well airconditioned or heated Mk3 than a Mk1 where they can hear the loco.

 

I thought part of the fall-out between A1ST and WCR was that A1ST felt the loco was being over-used. If that's true, I can't imagine they'll want it out too much.

There's always the question of quality Vs quantity, and whether there's the market to support even more rail tours.
The UK market being very well served compared to probably anywhere else in the world.

 

At the risk of veering into the "Transparency .... etc" territory, that depends on the marketing. If one of the selling points is "travelling in the style of the steam era" but the plan is to use 1970s Inter City coaches I would consider there to be something of a deception.
On the other hand if the train is simply marketed as a ride behind 60103 or the A1 without much reference to the features then I think you're right that the stock is important only to the extent that it meets expectations of a pleasant experience.

 

I think the focus of the fall out was use V maintenance schedules.

I doubt the A1st would object to more mainline use, so long as it was on their terms and allowed sufficient downtime for maintenance.
The fall out with West Coast was hugely unfortunate and self defeating on many levels, Tornado could have picked up a significant amount of RTC work.

The A1st also concluded that extended heritage line use can bring in useful money, but without the wear and tear of 75mph running.

 

I wonder of the September trains will run because of the weather, I am certainly not booking one yet.

 

Must be highly doubtful for any tour down South.
The forecast for both Swanage and Minehead for example until the end of the month has nothing more than a few odd days of light rain showers, and I suspect they will be a bit hit and miss.
I suspect NR will be looking for some weeks of steady medium intensity rain.

 

I dont think anybody is saying 75mph is too fast, the trust's point is that 20 days running at 25mph on a heritage railway likely induces less wear and tear than 10 mainline railtours at 3 times the speed. It probably also induces significantly less boiler cooling / heating cycles as the loco is likely to be running consecutively, rather than one off days.

LSL also seemingly like to operate Blue Peter at lower than its 'allowed' 75mph to limit wear.

 

The simply solution is to stick to the S&C as in the (?good) old days of David Ward. With it's 60mph line limit there will be no high speed wear and tear there - although wear and tear may take on another form.

Peter

 

Has it had extended Heritage Line use though? GCRN, NYMR, NVR on reasonably short visits, maybe coming to Swanage in the unlikely event of rain.

 

The impression I had was that A1ST objected to their loco being used at short notice, and/or with insufficient time between tours, putting strain on their volunteers

 

Its currently at the NYMR on extended hire.

 

I got the impression it was the amount of tours WCRC wanted to use it on didn't fit in with their maintenance plan, especially as it would be sent all over the country. 34028 works mainly out of Southall and London starters, 34067 does the Northern Belle and some others up north. That would leave 60163 to mop up everything else, so could be starting from Bristol then London then York in the space of a week.