Severn Valley Railway always creates a Christmas to remember for rail fans and families alike, with 2023 seeing a wonderful end to the year with an extremely busy railway.

The heritage railway pulled out all the stops with Santa trains, the Enchanted Express, Carol trains, on-train dining and end-of-season festive services. The Christmas period is vital for Severn Valley Railway and sees essential revenue created.

Lewis Maddox, Severn Valley Railway’s Visitor Engagement Manager said: “The great news is that Enchanted Express and the Carol trains sold out this year! Although Santa performed less well in terms of capacity filled, the visitor feedback for this event was extremely positive, showing that people loved the experience. On TripAdvisor, the comments included, ‘Treated like royalty…the show was terrific’, ‘The friendly staff made the whole outing feel really special’ and ‘excellent value for money’.”

​“Many Santa visitors filled in post-visit surveys and the 2023 Santa trains received a Net Promoter score of 56, compared to 39 for the 2022 services, which was a significant uplift. A Net Promoter score is a market research metric based on how likely visitors are to recommend an attraction to others. A score above 0 is good, above 20 is great, and above 50 is amazing!”

​“We’re always looking to innovate, so we’ll be putting all the events under the microscope at a debrief meeting this month. We’ll look at everything, and determine where we can make changes, and how we can do things better in the future.”

A delightful array of festive on-train dining experiences, including luxury four-course dinners, afternoon teas and gin trains which featured a specially created railway-inspired coal-infused gin, have also seen phenomenal attendance and response from visitors.

Nicky Freeman, Severn Valley Railway’s Visitor Experience Manager, said:

“This has been an exceptional festive season for us. The afternoon teas sold out completely, and we had amazing feedback. The Yuletide dining also proved popular and we’ve already had a large group enquiry for December 2024 on the back of it!”