STEAM DREAMS’ ‘WINDSORS’ OFF…
‘Bongo’s’ Berkshire beat falls silent as Steam Dreams accepts overseas tourists won’t be flooding back any time soon.
IF WE WERE TO START IN AUGUST WE’D ONLY HAVE HALF THE TRAINS
DAVID BUCK
Britain’s economy may be starting to open up – but that hasn’t meant the end of cancellations. Faced with around half of the programme already gone, Steam Dreams boss David Buck accepted in July that the time had come to give up on this year’s Windsor shuttles.
The ‘Royal Windsor Steam Express’ was one of the success stories of last year – even if as a pure steam itinerary it will never be in the gricer hall of fame. Rather, the top and tail shuttles from London have been aimed at tourists. A greater loss from our point of view is probably the related evening ‘Sunset Steam Express’ trips, running over the ‘Surrey circuit’ on the same dates.
So successful was 2019’s debut season (which used David’s ‘B1’ No. 61306), that this year’s programme was to have been around 50% bigger, with trains on Tuesdays starting on May 16, plus a sprinkling of Saturdays too.
However, said David on July 10: “We’re not going to run any Windsors or ‘Sunsets’ this year, primarily because we’ve only got half the season left, that we need time to market them – and that there aren’t the overseas tourists in London.
“We would have started in May to go up to September, but if we were to start in August we’d only have half the trains.”
Current social distancing also means “significantly fewer seats”, and “when you add that together, it’s not viableÉ But we will be back next year.”
The big question now for Steam Dreams is what to do with the rest of the summer programme, as the promoter tries to digest the implications of the new face covering law (see separate story and SR508). As part of that it’s just held a survey of passengers and is now sifting the results “and thinking carefully what to do”.
“The biggest factor is face coverings – not so much dining because we think there’s a reasonable excuse for that – but in general for people’s comfort.”