SANTA SPECIALS: General update including why we can’t run extra trains or offer a reserve list .

It’s been two days since our 2021 Steam Santa Specials ticket release.

On Monday evening hundreds of you went to book tickets for the relatively few services that we are able to offer this year.

Following 2020 we expected that demand would be very high, but this year exceeded even our wildest expectations. Our main Facebook post for the event had over 40,000 views, and in the end, many of you were sadly unsuccessful as the event sold out in minutes.

We know that many of you felt very disappointed as a result. However, please remember that we are unpaid volunteers who do all things Railway in our spare time. We do what we do on top of our day jobs, in addition to our family lives, and alongside the other personal commitments that we have.

We want to make people happy and don’t like leaving people upset. However, as a relatively small volunteer-run charitable organisation, we can only do so much with the rather limited resources that we currently have.

Since Monday our team have received countless messages, and we are trying our best to respond as soon as possible. However, we thought we’d answer two of the most common questions.

Firstly, why can’t we run more trains? Well, would absolutely love to. However, the answer is the reason above. We have no paid staff and are run entirely by unpaid volunteers who do it in their spare time to allow people to continue enjoying the magic of heritage railways for generations to come.

Our Santa event is very resource-intensive, and that’s not just on the days that trains run. There’s also the admin and other preparations that need to be done before the services, and this takes no small amount of time. Ultimately, at present, we sadly just can’t do any more than we are already able to.

It is also for that reason why we can’t offer a reserve list. Once again, we would love to. But there are literally thousands of you who are interested in the event, and our small team just don’t have the capacity to offer such a list. If we did then it would be an impossible task that would just leave even more of you disappointed.

We hope the above explains the situation. We really would love to welcome more of you to our Railway this Christmas. However, it just isn’t possible, and our team hope that you understand.