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Flying Scotsman trip through Berkshire postponed until September (https://www.getreading.co.uk/news/reading-berkshire-news/flying-scotsman-trip-through-berkshire-20659092)

This "trip" was proclaimed on a local news website on March 10, and I duly noted the date (today) in my diary. Having seen it a couple of times, I hadn't been intending to make a point of spectating but happened to be near Tilehurst Station at 0940, not long before it was apparently due to pass through. (It was scheduled - I believed - to leave Oxford at 0920.) So I thought, "might as well".

There were some eight people hanging around, most behind the fence of Platform One. I trotted across to Platform Three and waited until 0955, when another would-be spectator checked on his mobile and told me that the trip had been cancelled until September.

The article to which I link was put on the news website at 1012.

MODIFICATION: Odd. I had thought that the March 10 article said that the train was due to leave Oxford at 0920, but I've just checked it and it said that the journey would start at Paddington then and take two hours 40 minutes - suggesting it would be passing through Tilehurst far later than 0950ish. (On past trips it has made a very long pause at Reading to allow admirers an extended close-up.)

Rather than admitting to senility, I wonder if the original article had got the trip the wrong way around and had been amended.(Local news websites have form when it comes to garbling articles about railways, especially Crossrail.) And those other eight people would also seem to have been expecting the train around 1000ish.

Dunno when the trip was cancelled, and exactly why. Covid restrictions, presumably, and I had wondered how the train could be run cost-effectively without all/most of the seats being taken.

From that article:


Tut, tut, tut.

Some trips postponed (low bookings perhaps?) but some have already happened and others are still going ahead before it heads off to Scotland at the end of the month.  https://www.steamdreams.co.uk/tours.php?loco=6351 has details.