Rail Tours and excursions started from the early days of railways - with Thomas Cook arranging the very first one in the summer of 1841 - see
((here)) for the story of the first excusion from Leicester to Loughborough to take his supporters to a temperance meeting.
Over the years, excursions and special trips have blossomed - taking people to specil events (though temperance meetings seem to have faded out) and to interesting destinations - even "mystery trips" which were a personal favourite. Other trips were run for railway advocates and enthusisast to lines rarely used for passenger trains (some, sadly, as a final train before complete closure) or using unusual motive power, or even running part of their route over heritage lines.
From
29th January 1977 - Railway Pictorial Publications Railtours - "Western Memorial" from Paddington to Crewe via the Severn Tunnel - as logged on
Six Bells Junction - 10 hours of travel for just 2 hours at destination.
"Specials" carry on to this day - at one time very big business but with the reduction in spare trains they are just a shadow of their former selves. They have for the most part moved from being really good value for all with Merrymaker (see
((here))) to being still good value but for a premium product, catered now far better than standard scheduled trains, and with rolling stock to modern standard but often of heritage derivation and using historic technology
Click on the map to explore geographics
