Severn Valley gears up to carry 36,000 on its Santa trains
THE FIRST of more than 100 special steam trains, taking over 36,000 children, their mums and dads, uncles and aunts, grandmas and grandpas to meet and receive presents from Santa, will set out from the Severn Valley Railway’s Kidderminster Town station at 09.45am on Saturday.
Almost 30,000 people have pre-booked places on the SVR’s ‘must-do’ Santa Steam Specials which run to the magical and very elaborate Grotto at Arley, and those seats which remain are mostly on afternoon trains, during the early weekends in December.
“As always, we’ll do what we can to fit in those people who haven’t pre-booked” says SVR Marketing Manager John Leach, “but some weekends are already literally choc-a-bloc, and we can’t guarantee places.
“Every year we see little children with tears in their eyes because there’s no room on the trains and their parents haven’t booked - it’s really heartbreaking and we hate to see that – so that’s why we so urge pre-booking.”
There are some places however on the SVR’s Saturday or Sunday trains this weekend (December 2 & 3) and next (December 9 & 10), and would-be Santa visitors will have a fair chance of seats from lunchtime onwards, says John. Trains run to Santa’s grotto at half-hourly intervals, the last train departing at 4pm. A flat fare of £9.25 applies and includes a present from Santa for all children aged 1 – 15 years.
Because of road works immediately outside the SVR’s Kidderminster station in Comberton Hill which last weekend caused gridlock in the town, the railway is however urging all visitors to allow an extra 40 minutes for their journey to the station.
Santa trains on the SVR having been running for almost 40 years now, and as one of the biggest and most elaborate volunteer exercises in the Midlands, involves many months of detailed planning.
To handle all the Santa Specials, Christmas Dining Trains, and Yuletide season trains (between Christmas and New Year), the SVR mobilises more than 300 volunteers to cover the myriad of jobs that need to be done - tasks as diverse as firing steam locomotives, checking tickets, peeling the Christmas dinner vegetables, rostering the signalmen and train guards, and decorating Santa’s Grotto - a remarkable kaleidoscope of skills all coming together at the same.
Four trains, and up to five different steam locomotives will be in action on the Santa runs simultaneously, with each train relying on a minimum of seven crew.
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