Fawlty Towers-style dining train to help spearhead revival of Scottish heritage rail tours

A Fawlty Towers-themed dining experience is to feature among heritage train trips being resumed by Britain’s oldest heritage train tour operator after a five-year gap forced by Covid, rail strikes and upgrading work to meet safety regulations.

The Scottish Railway Preservation Society (SRPS) will also seek to attract more passengers onto its five-mile Bo’ness & Kinneil Railway, with trains badged with children’s characters such as Paddington, the Gruffalo and Bluey.

One of the locomotives which will haul trains on the Bo'ness & Kinneil Railway in 2025 following a lengthy overhaul | Lisa Ferguson/The Scotsmam

Other innovations include fish and chips being offered on some services after a successful trial in October.

The society, which will celebrate its 55th birthday in 2025, also hopes to benefit from bicentenary events across Britain to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of the railways.

It has formed a partnership with Crewe-based Locomotive Services Limited (LSL), which will provide some historic carriages for the rail tours programme while its own fleet are upgraded.

The SRPS has lost some £500,000 from being unable to run trips across the British network since before the pandemic, other than one in 2023 and 2024. The society is counting on the 2025 programme to reap a £200,000 profit to help fund projects such as mandatory central door locking and improved crashworthiness of its carriages.

Six of the SRPS’s 16 carriages, built in the 1950s and known as “Mark 1s”, have been upgraded, with another four due to follow in 2025 and the rest when money allows.

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Trial fitting of central door locking is underway with the Office of Rail and Road regulator seeking more progress before granting SRPS more time to complete the work. It is expected to permit some carriages to run with stewards staffing doors until the locks are installed.

The upgrades are required for main line running, but not where trains travel up to 25mph, such as on the Bo’ness line.

SRPS chair Andrew Wells told The Scotsman: “We are the longest serving operator of rail tours in the UK and now, after the Covid environment, getting our carriages up to the required health and safety standards to run on the main line is really exciting for us.

Lisa Ferguson/The Scotsman

“Two forms of upgrade to the carriages are required. One is structural integrity - a lot of work to effectively rebuild carriages that are over 70 years old, making sure they are safe on the main line to run at 100mph.

“Secondly, central door locking. That is fitting the carriages with locks that make sure that people can’t inadvertently open the doors while they are on the move so they are kept safe.

“We’ve partnered with LSL and the Royal Scot Trust in Crewe, who are going to be the operators of our tours and will bring in some of their steam and diesel locomotives to help. They have a fantastic track record of running rail tours.”

Carriage restorer Jim Ormiston, who has been an SRPS member for 45 years, working on a 1950s coach | Lisa Ferguson/The Scotsman

The trips, which start in February, include to Oban, Inverness, Kyle of Lochalsh, Aberdeen and Wemyss Bay to mark the station’s 160th anniversary.

They will be hauled by a combination of historic steam and diesel locomotives, including SRPS Railtours’ class 37 diesel engine Isle of Mull. A limited edition model of the locomotive sold out in 2024, with collectors paying up to £270 each for the 350 that were made.

Some of the planned steam-hauled excursions round the “Forth Circle” - over the Forth Bridge and via Fife and Stirling - will feature a dining comedy in August based on the classic BBC sitcom Fawlty Towers.

Mr Wells said: “On two of the trips, we’re going to do ‘Faulty Towers’, so people will get their dining by Basil and Sybil Fawlty on the train. As we do that, we’re going to seek it to be branded with the Edinburgh Festival because they will operated out of Edinburgh.”

Passengers will be served a three-course meal as part of the show, “Faulty Towers The Dining Experience”, which has been staged across the world since premiering in Australia in 1997.

Mr Wells said: “We’re looking forward to people having that comedy experience while on the train running round the Forth Circle.”

A pressure gauge on a steam locomotive at the Scottish Railway Preservation Society at Bo'ness | Lisa Ferguson/The Scotsman

On the Bo’ness line, Mr Wells said the focus was widening its appeal thanks to a new licensing deal. He said: “We’ve run ‘Days Out with Thomas’ with Mattel and Santa Specials for many years, which are the highlight of our calendar for families.

“But we are also partnering with Fox & Edwards Events, who have worked with other heritage railways. They are bringing characters such as Paddington, Bluey and Peter Rabbit to us which people will be able to see on train running days in 2025.”

Other developments include to enable more trains to run and to enhance an intermediate station on the line, which runs to Manuel, where SRPS Railtours services join the main Edinburgh-Glasgow route.

Jim Ormiston working on upgrading one of the SRPS's 1950s carriages in Bo'ness | Lisa Ferguson/The Scotsman

Mr Wells said: “Birkhill is a jewel on our railway, which is used a lot for filming because it’s a prototypical countryside halt. The station building came from Monifieth and was also used at the Glasgow Garden Festival in 1988.

“We are upgrading the facilities. We have just opened a new footbridge and are looking to commission a a second platform, and there are countryside walks around the station, which are really important.

“We are also building a £75,000 signal box there, for which we still need the last £25,000, which will enable us to run more trains up and down the line.”

Isle of Mull, the SRPS class 37 diesel locomotive which hauls many of its tours | Lisa Ferguson/The Scotsman

The line has become a favourite for TV and film dramas, the latest of which was filmed at Birkhill in July. The Primrose Railway Children, based on a Jacqueline Wilson children’s novel, was screened on CBBC in December and is available on the BBC iPlayer.

In other moves, SRPS’s extensive fleet has been boosted by 1955 Brighton-built steam locomotive 80105 returning to service on the Bo’ness line after a 14-year restoration.

Another addition is a Linwood-built “diesel multiple unit” that ran between Edinburgh and Fife in the 1990s after service in the south west of England.