Vintage Trains — Local services in Birmingham

We travelled on the Welsh Marches tour on 5th March 2022. Good: The journey is wonderful with stunning scenery. Clun Castle never missed a beat and we did well on timings until the last part of the journey getting back to Tyesley Works (when we were late, having waited at snow hill 30minutes) The serving team worked really hard, they were friendly and chatted away and nothing was too much trouble.

Bad: We were in the Eagle Pullman car - it was freezing all day, no heating and the doors between the carriages were open (for the convenience of the staff passing through serving customers). All our party had tops, jumpers, coats, scarves and gloves jeans and boots and we were all cold all day. There was no heating at all in this carriage and it was extremely cold and uncomfortably cold.

The food was poor - porridge awful with a few raisins on top, toast wasn’t toasted, English breakfast was passable. Evening meal - starter cold roasted vegetable and olive salad not very nice, roast chicken - quite good, dessert reasonable, cheese and biscuits, nice cheese but just ordinary crackers no celery, a few grapes. Considering we paid £140 each for the food it was very poor value for money indeed. The bread rolls were cheap and nasty. The evening meal did not include any drinks or wine they were all extra.

Our carriage was not given a feedback form, the lights at each table didn’t work, the curtains were faded and hanging off the rail.

The toilet was awful - brown stained bowl, no hot water, no towels to dry your hands. On the outward journey there were some sheets of loo roll to dry your hands on however during the journey the toilet was not replenished.

The waiting /catering staff were amazingly good and we gave them a generous tip as they were doing their very best.

The drinks were expensive £2.20 for a can of coke, £4:40 for a small can of beer, we expect to pay more on a trip out but these did seem expensive.

There seemed to be a few train managers - they did not once ask our table how’s your journey going? Have you had a good day? Everything alright? We felt ignored.

We have travelled with vintage trains over the last 15 years and always felt it was of a good standard and reasonable quality. Todays journey fell far short of reasonable and we won’t be booking with vintage trains again.

We leave this review to let other prospective travellers know what to expect, somewhere along the way Vintage trains have lost their way and are cutting corners and providing a cheap alternative to the standard expected and advertised.

I am sorry to have to post such a poor review however this has been our...

My experience with this company is poor as I feel their customer service is unacceptable and I would not recommend them. I booked the experience, made a lot of arrangements revolving around this and then a few months later, they simply cancelled the day - I was told they just were not running that day anymore. It's not as if there was an issue such as weather conditions or breakdown etc. This was a birthday event and resulted in me losing significant money, cancelling other plans made around this, so overall a ruined trip leading to a big disappointment. I made Vintage Trains aware of this on several occasions and asked for a good will compensation back towards a new booking, however this was just ignored so I have lost my money. Looking at other reviews, it seems apparent that it is hit and miss as to the experience you will have booking this company, you may get lucky or you may end up being seriously disappointed like myself and others who have also posted negative reviews. I cannot see any efforts from them to respond to disappointed customers like myself. Please take this review as a warning that if you wish to book, you are taking a significant risk and consider this before committing to booking especially if this a...

We travelled on the White Rose day excursion to York. Everything was well organised on arrival at Tysely for an 8:30 departure and the staff were amazing from beginning to end. However shortly before arriving at Totton our train broke down due to a problem with a water pipe supplying the engine...essential on a steam train. We were stationary for an hour while the onboard engineer effected repairs. We arrived in York at 2pm instead of 1pm and our time visiting the Christmas market was therefore less than expected. We enjoyed our pre-booked bacon butties, despite the absence of butter! However on our return journey there were no plans for any hot food to be available for purchase in tourist class and the heating wasn’t working in several carriages including ours. We were told it was a further problem created by the water pipe issue in the morning. We were lucky that the outside temperature was warmer than usual for mid-December. What would they have done if it was literally freezing? We were glad to return to the warmth of our car for the journey home at approximately 11pm. Vintage Trains, your onboard staff were brilliant but you do need to up your game in the...