That sounds amazing Sandy.
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Rail "mystery tours"?
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I didn't know they used Northampton - Mkt Harboro, but certainly added to the mysteryWhen was this, can you remember?
Sorry not precisely. Late 70s / early 80s probably. Dont think I've kept any records but I'll have a look. A clue was if a pair of 25s were at the front at Euston. Obviously an electric loco meant you were heading towards Rugby.
Well the Buffets where open for most of the journey, however I think most people stocked up and brought their supplies with them, due to the prices charged in them!
As to being a way of getting round the draconian licensing laws. No! But it did happen on the ffestiniog railway in the 60's, 70, and early 80's.
Our family did quite a few of these from Birmingham in the 70s and they often picked up at Northfield in the days before Cross-City. It must have been the only time that you could see 200 people standing there on the old centre platform. Did any of the other excursions pick up at minor stations?
One problem was that in the dark on the return the driver had to stop at an unfamiliar and sometimes unlit platform on a fast section of track. A couple of times we had to walk back through the train to get to a door that was at the platform, and once we overshot the platform entirely; I was young and tired and can't quite remember the details, but I think eventually the driver got permission to reverse back.
Don't remember what hauled the excursions either, but it was usually a long rake of Mark 1s. Our destination often seemed to be North Wales (Llandudno, Rhyl, Colwyn Bay), but I also remember York, a particularly grim November day in Scarborough, and Southend by a very convoluted route - there must have been others too.
Basically they were a cheap day out for families at the time.
One problem was that in the dark on the return the driver had to stop at an unfamiliar and sometimes unlit platform on a fast section of track. A couple of times we had to walk back through the train to get to a door that was at the platform, and once we overshot the platform entirely; I was young and tired and can't quite remember the details, but I think eventually the driver got permission to reverse back.
Don't remember what hauled the excursions either, but it was usually a long rake of Mark 1s. Our destination often seemed to be North Wales (Llandudno, Rhyl, Colwyn Bay), but I also remember York, a particularly grim November day in Scarborough, and Southend by a very convoluted route - there must have been others too.
Basically they were a cheap day out for families at the time.
eastwestdivide
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Although they often ended up on the Southern at the seaside, there were mystexes starting on the Southern. In the Aug 1983 I was booked on one from the Medway Towns. Eagerly waiting on platform 2 at Strood, and expecting a single 33 for an engine change somewhere in N London, in rolled 2x33s on SR-allocated Mk1s, and off we went to Exeter via the Salisbury route. Also managed a nice photo at Central of the two 33s blasting up the bank from St Davids for the return journey, followed by a sprint over the footbridge.
Fantastic photos Eastwest.
Ash Bridge
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Seconded!
70014IronDuke
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Interesting. I'm surprised they didn't use an electric to Northampton though. I mean, they used to do that with the diverted Glasgow Sleeper in the mid-70s. Must have been a rare sight, 2 x 25s and rake of Mk1s (?) bombing down the WCML
- I’ve just dug this out of my trip report thread from a couple of years ago as I thought it might be of interest to this thread...
It’s written by my father Oerlikon (or ‘Colin’ in old money):
So, by and large, I only have memories left from the halcyon days of British Railways up to the period where they started to pour blue paint over everything and, if you’re not utterly bored at this point, I’d just like to share with you a little story about the “Mystery Tour”. I don’t know if you’ve been on a mystery tour Mr C, but they were great fun. I lived at Watlington in Oxfordshire at the time and my wife and I had a lovely little boy who was train mad. Brilliant excuse to go on a mystery tour and there were quite a few of them in those days. Assembled around sunrise at Princes Risborough station. The train pulled in, a 47 painted blue but distracted from noting the number because little boy needed a wee. Lots of carriages, blue and grey more or less. Actually, they seemed to manage to find lots of carriages for people in those days. And there were lots of people! Dashing up the old Great Western main line, we arrived at Birmingham New Street. Some people thought we had arrived at our mystery destination and were happy to get off and go shopping. But no, British Rail had other things in mind for us! At Birmingham, quite a lot of people got on which I thought was rather odd because, so far as I knew, the train didn't pick up anywhere else and in fact the platform indicator read “Excursion” or “Special” or something like that. And, no-one on the train knew where we were going anyway, it being a "Mystery" as it were...
By the time the new arrivals, became aware that something was terribly amiss, the train was well on its way out of the station. Just as the last few carriages were clearing the platform, someone managed to open a window and shout at the platform staff “Where is this train going?” To which the reply was “Llandrindod Wells”. You should have seen the panic! Not only were those who were taking part in the mystery tour suddenly enlightened as to their destination, but those who had anticipated an early return to their comfortable houses in the outer suburbs of Birmingham were suddenly faced with a non-stop journey to the middle of Wales. What followed was quite extraordinary. I think the guard must have written a note, wrapped it round a brick and thrown it through a signal box window somewhere just north of Birmingham because the train suddenly lurched to the right and undertook a tour of goods only lines around Birmingham at the end of which time we arrived back exactly at the platform we had left two hours earlier! There was a frantic scramble to disembark. I had no idea you could go in a circle around Birmingham and never in a month of Sundays would you otherwise have seen some of the freight lines we saw that day! Sadly, no one else seemed excited by this unbelievable bonus and it’s fair to say that most of the passengers seemed to be entirely peed off for one reason or another. Still, we did get to Llandrindod Wells and had half an hour there! On the way back I drifted into a reverie about all those wonderful rusty lines, old sidings and derelict stations we had seen around Birmingham on that very special mystery tour! Magical names, Soho Road, Handsworth Wood, Windsor Street Wharf and the Curzon Street Triangle, former gateway to Phillip Hardwick's Romanesque first Birmingham station built in 1838, closed as a goods station in the 1960's and now possibly to be reborn as part of HS2!
Worth sharing I reckon. - Things are all a bit different these days...
(It was train mad me that needed a pee)
randyrippley
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I've often wondered if the class 50 I saw parked at the head of an excursion set at Morecambe Sept 1977 saturday was on a mystery tour, but from where ? By then all the 50s had headed west, but I can't believe it ran all the way from the west country
d9009alycidon
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Just as an addendum to the post about the Birmingham Circular, I traveled from Coatbridge Central to Birmingham around 1980 on an Aberdeen to Birmingham dated train, this appeared to be heading for a nice early arrival at New St. when it took a left turn at Soho and ran via Perry Bar etc to arrive in Birmingham New Street from the south, must have confused the life out of the normals
Trips from Bristol that I did used to have a printout on the table when you got on with the timings of arrival/departure from your destination stations, so they were only a mystery until you got on. The Bristol excursion rake of mk1s had a Gresley buffet in the middle for quite a while.
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