Great Central Railway - (Loughborough Central) — Attraction in Charnwood

We have been on the GCR many times and have generally had a good time although their Santa express was far inferior to the SVR but cheaper and I once paid for drinks that never turned up! However this was about the Last Hurrah Gala 20224 on Saturday 16th November. I took my step-daughter and her two boys. One is a 10 year old with autism and he is very fussy about what he eats and the other is a 6 year old.

The boys were having a good time but as it got near to lunchtime, the 6 year old said he was very hungry, so we boarded the train with the buffet coaches at Rothley. This was 11.23am. Initially and this is usual for the GCR, there wasn't enough seating for passengers, so we stood until some people kindly moved for us. I queued for some time to order food and as I got to the front of the queue, I started to order our food by asking for two sausage cobs and the member of staff in kitchen uniform interrupted me and said, "no" in a raised voice. I was amazed how abrupt and rude he was. I asked him why and said we've ran out of hot food (11.23am train). I was flabbergasted. He was obviously stressed and hopefully embarrassed and said they wouldn't have any food for one and a half more hours - in others until lunch was nearly over. I had two hungry children and all I could buy for them was crisps, cookies or chocolate. I did manage to buy two cups of tea but they ran out of milk too within ten minutes. As you can imagine, the only discussion between fee paying passengers in the advertised buffet coach was how poor the GCR organisation was with lots of hungry, irritable people. What is perhaps worse is that I didn't receive a single apology from any member of staff.

We waited for an hour and 15 minutes then I joined to queue again. When I got to the front, they said there was only 10 breakfasts left (after a restock) and there was more than 10 people in the queue! I ordered the two sausage cobs and a veggie breakfast for me then for the autistic child, I ordered a baked potato with cheese - he had this the last time on the same journey only a month or so ago. The staff member said, "oh we don't do baked potatoes on Last Hurrahs" I couldn't have written that if I was writing a farce! Why not? How difficult are baked potatoes? Eventually I negotiated bread and butter and two eggs and managed to persuade the boy to eat it - they can't do toast either!

I have never known such a disorganised bunch of people in my whole life. Like many others, I pre-booked so to suggest they didn't realise they would have a lot of people turn up is just unbelievable. It' the last event of the year before the Santa expresses.

We also had some people asking for money for the joining of the two GCR railways. I didn't mind contributing but coming into peoples compartments and standing over people in my view was harassment and intimidation. The same applied to someone touting a railway magazine. He continued to try and persuade us to subscribe even after I said no.

Fortunately, we have never had a bad experience on the SVR so will just use them from now on.

The two 2/5 was because we did enjoy the trains but the boys wanted to leave early to get,...

We visited on a weekday when there were no trains running, but we knew this so not a disappointment. From the outside the building is quite imposing and nicely maintained. The entrance/ticket hall is very atmospheric and the floorboards tell a good story. There's a lift to give access to the platform if the stairs are too much. The wooden handrail on the stairs is beautiful and the grain is raised showing years of wear as travellers have steadied themselves on the way down. The luggage slide on the side of the steps is something that should be considered for modern rail stations. The platform is 'dressed' with hand trolleys, luggage and goods and looks as it would have when it was in use. The waiting rooms and powder rooms are just as they were when the station closed. I'd forgotten how good a chain flush toilet sounds! Everything is well maintained and clean. The cafe wasn't open during our visit, it looks just as good as everything around it and I'm confident it would provide a good cup of tea. At the ticket office end of the platform there is a small museum that holds a lot of the background detail of a working station and a successful railway. From sick notes to silver wear and truncheons, the artifacts give an insight into the human aspect of travelling by rail or working on the railway. The posters advertising 'specials' to take people to the races or the seaside are lovely and again illustrate the social importance of the services provided. The maps and tickets on display document the extent of the rail network before Beeching wreaked havoc. A lot of rural England suddenly became more remote and lost some of its life as a result The museum and station is not huge, but it's easy to pass an hour or so on a quiet day and, if trains are running (weekends and bank holidays) the whole experience will be very different. If coming here with children I would definitely pick a day when trains are running, if a rail enthusiast or someone into more general social history, there is plenty to see at...

I booked a private carriage for the family on the steam train for Xmas. I was very disappointed, the train wasn't decorated very well, there were a few green decorations with fairy lights in. It wasn't very colourful & we had to turn the white (no colour) fairy lights on ourselves. The train from the outside was very disappointing, it looked like a normal train not the Xmas train. No decorations on the outside of the train, no lights, just a normal looking train & very little effort on the inside also. The visit from Mrs claus & friend was lovely and the children really enjoyed it. The visit from Santa was also lovely the children spoke to santa & got a teddy bear. It would have been nice to have had a gift to open. Santa also visited the compartment next door then came back to our compartment & basically asked the children to keep the noise down as someone nextdoor wasn't feeling well. My name was the only name on the list when arriving & signing in for a private compartment so I'm not sure if they had even booked & paid for this compartment. It's a Xmas train and the children are excited, they'd just seen Santa, I found this a bit negative & rude for Santa. We were supposed to get warm mince pies, they were cold in a packet, I was supposed to get a free tin included in the private compartment, this didn't happen & when I asked about the tin I was told "I don't get one" even though it states on the website you get a free tin with a private compartment. I also have my reservations it was even a steam train. I'm sure we had a diesel engine on arriving back at the station. I did however discover there are numerous santa trains & I could have booked a different train for less money & got a lot better experience, hot chocolate, presents, more for the children. So my advice is to make sure you shop properly I wouldn't recommend the Xmas train we went on I was sooo disappointed & it...