Flamboyant Trains

[MidnightFlyer]

Who here remembers them?

I only did one (maybe two?) tours with them, but my word were they good. Brighton Rocks With AC/DC is still well within the top five tours I have ever done (which was 70 at my last count), and they had a knack for combining really good track tours with good traction and actually quite nice destinations!

Unfortunately they are no longer around, which is a real shame, but they were easily one of the best tour operators I have ever been with!

 

[theblackwatch]

They only ran two trips. I remember reading on wnxx that quite a few people had a battle to get their money back when they cancelled the remaining trains. Unfortunately for Flamboyant, the tour you mentioned wasn't at all popular - from what I recall, it was only around half full, despite being only load 9 (the maximum possible for Brighton).

 

[bluenoxid]

It was a good bunch of people that helped steward. A mixture of enthusiastic people but everyone had had roles in the customer service sector (rail and non rail), so they knew the high standards to meet and they wanted to hit that. It had the right people on board (to get the routes and the service) but rail tours are a high cost game unfortunately. You can't afford to make too many losses.

It's nice to hear positive comments like that. Don't see it coming back though

I think people got their money back in the end with regards to the cancelled tours (IIRC, it is getting a bit fuzzy).

 

[Drimnagh Road]

The traction used on their tours didn't personally appeal to me, Doncaster-Brighton was a pretty boring route, air-con stock, the Goylie Gosh thing was repeatedly caped, I think they were just unfortunate to be doomed from the word go.

What about Kingfisher, they seemed to be well established, disappeared off the face of the earth after 2008. I know one of the guys went on to form Statesman.

 

[Dreadnought]

They only ran two trips. I remember reading on wnxx that quite a few people had a battle to get their money back when they cancelled the remaining trains. Unfortunately for Flamboyant, the tour you mentioned wasn't at all popular - from what I recall, it was only around half full, despite being only load 9 (the maximum possible for Brighton).

As Flamboyant they only ran the one tour (Brighton Rocks), the other tour was run the year before as Donny PSB (or something similar).

I don't think the Brighton tour was helped when 73205 & 73209 were allocated to it since this pair had also worked the 2 previous tours to use 73s as well.

 

[Chester025]

Still waiting for Class 20s to Aintree...