From (deep in an article) in
The Swindon AdvertiserIn September last year, the Office of Rail and Road granted Vintage Trains a Train Operating Company licence to operate scheduled mainline services.
Their trains, including Clun Castle, will feature on timetables between Birmingham Snow Hill and Stratford-upon-Avon from the summer.
The firm recently announced a partnership with the West Midlands Rail Executive to promote the area’s economy by attracting visitors, creating apprenticeships and regenerating stations.
I was commenting in a thread just the other day about the "Holy Grail" of through trains / year round and commuter services from Swanage, Kingswear and Minehead (on)to the main network. Perhaps the opposite way round is regular scheduled heritage passenger trains running on the main network's infrastructure? So congratulations to Vintage Trains for their step in that direction.
Steam trains are - for the foreseeable future - going to be expensive to operate, and my mind turns to similar running on main lines of heritage diesel and electric stock. I mused (and purely in my dreams) with an Oxford to Salisbury service (so long ago it was before the days of Go-op) with diesel electric units based at Didcot providing tourist services between the end points, through some beautiful scenery, and making double use of the trains as they also carried local traffic between intermediate stations. One has to wonder about services from Minehead into platform 6 (or is it 1?) at Taunton - yes, I know there is the "we have to cross the main lines" issue, and I wonder how the Swanage group is getting in with their unit(s) coming into Wareham.
Did I say anything about heritage electric from Grove Park to Bromley North on Sundays?
