The BeerTrain

I was working in Rail House, Crewe, planning all the Charter services for Res/EWS when the idea of a central office was proposed. The final choice of Doncaster pleasing no-one in the offices at Crewe or Nottingham (most of us had already relocated once already when our offices moved away form London!). I had just finished training all the staff in the Charter trains section & we were finally fully staffed - however within weeks of the announcement of "everyone should move to Doncaster" most of our staff decided to go back to previous posts in the West Midlands or North West, even if they were lower graded. A huge number of the experienced staff also didn't see Doncaster as a viable option. It became clear over 2 or 3 "brain-storming to set up the new office" meetings, held in a local hostelry with free Beer all evening as the enticement to attend, that the Canadian couple in charge of setting up the office were NOT going to take notice of anything we told th...

To set the scene for this day trip, myself & my fellow Crompton bashers were having a bit of a lean time of it. Our beloved Pompey's had finished in May 1988 and even the booked 33/1 turns on the Waterloo - Salisbury's had finished on 14th May 1989. All we had to look forward too each week was one booked turn, a 33/1 diagram Saturday Only doing two return trips between Weymouth & Bristol - meagre fare and not easy to get to as I still lived in Kent at the time! I was looking for something a bit different when I came across a leaflet from the Bournemouth Rail Travel Association (BRTA), run by Anthony Stone. Their bread and butter was running trips from the South Coast up to London for things like Christmas shopping, theatre breaks & days out in the Capital.  Mr Stone did, however, like to venture further afield and arranged some cracking trips. Here is the brochure / booking form I picked up. The 1st July just happened to be my Birthday! I needed to do a bit of diggi...