More than 25,000 pre-book for Severn Valley ‘Santa’ Trains
The first of the Severn Valley Railway’s Santa trains steams out of Kidderminster this Saturday (December 5th), with more than 25,000 people - mostly children, mums and dads and grandparents - booked to make the magical visit to Santa’s grotto at Arley over the next three weeks.
The first ‘Santa’ bookings were received back in October, and the SVR expects to carry almost 30,000 Santa visitors before the last trains run on Christmas Eve.
Some 89 Santa trains will be run in all, with an average capacity of 350 people per train. More than 60 trains are already ‘full’, and this weekend (December 5th & 6th) will be the last opportunity for unbooked visitors to turn up, pay and travel on the same day. All morning trains are full, but Kidderminster booking office will be open from 12.45pm to sell tickets for spare seats on the afternoon trains.
December is the Severn Valley Railway’s busiest month of the year by far, and with its post-Christmas ‘Festive Season’ trains between Kidderminster and Bridgnorth (daily from Boxing Day until Sunday January 3rd), the 16-mile steam heritage line is expecting to cater for up to 44,000 visitors during the month.
If those figures are realised then the railway will have carried more than a quarter of a million passengers this year - only the second time in the heritage line’s 40 years of steam operation that this landmark has been reached - and possibly nudging the railway’s all-time record in 2005, of 252,000 passengers.
SVR Marketing Manager John Leach summed up the very buoyant end to the 2009 running season. “It’s a vote of confidence in the railway’s policy of keeping traditional family values and traditional Christmas values, at the forefront of what we do” he said. “There’s nothing neon about the Severn Valley at Christmas, and I don’t think there ever will be.
“Our two Christmas Carol Trains, for example, from Kidderminster and Bewdley on the evenings of Saturdays December 12 and 19, just set out to create the mood and the spirit of traditional Christmases, by inviting passengers to join with a choir in the singing of carols on the platforms at the stations we visit as we travel down the line. The train on the 19th is full, and the one on the 12th is filling up well.”
All ten of the SVR’s Christmas Dining (Luncheon) Trains and Christmas Evening Dinner Trains are also fully booked, and says John Leach: “We could fill them again too - but we simply don’t have the capacity. It’s certainly a very strong end to the year for us, and repays the very considerable effort that our volunteers and full-time staff put in to making sure that Christmas is still ‘special’ for everyone.”
+ Permalink