Special Trains

The special trains we organised, had a variety of purposes. In partnership with GWR, so far we have put on three trains to London, Oxford / Stratford-Upon-Avon and Weymouth. For each train, a HST was hired from GWR, although a slight variation was used for the Weymouth train, explained on the Weymouth trip page!

There were a number of reasons for organising these charters.

Firstly to promote our belief that a proposed regular service could be used for travel beyond Exeter and that a service would be well patronated.

Secondly to use the opportunity to advertise our campaign, certainly local press were very interested in the trips, the first one was picked up by nationals because of being the first charter out of Okehampton to London for many years. Of course that trip wasn’t without it’s issues too!

We’re grateful to GWR because they were very supportive and very generous with the way the worked with us to make the charters work. They also had a bunch of staff who had volunteered their time to provide buffet and safety support.

Select the link to find out about each of the trains and see some images.