This summer, The Steam Dreams Rail Co. is launching The Royal Windsor Steam Express, the first regular steam train service in recent history from London Waterloo to Windsor.

The service will leave Waterloo at 08.02, 11.10 and 14.10 every Tuesday, June 4th – September 3rd.  There will be four classes of travel including elegant 1950’s Pullman Style Dining carriage as well as First Class Restaurant Cars.

Tickets start at £35 up to £85 per person for the Pullman Style Dining experience with Champagne brunch. Table service for snacks and drinks will be available throughout the rest of the train and picnics welcome. Tickets can be purchased online or at the station on the day.

The company is also launching the The Sunset Steam Express, a sunset dining experience through the picturesque Surrey Hills.

The Sunset Steam Express will leave London’s Waterloo Station at 18:00 for a four hour round trip through the Surrey Hills – an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). Dinner and fine wines will be served en route in the Pullman Style Dining carriages.

The train will head south across the suburbs of London, pass through Guildford and take the steep climb through the Surrey Hills before descending the Vale of Holmesdale and back to Waterloo via the market towns of Dorking and Reigate.

Prices from £99 per person in Premier Dining up to £129 per person travelling Pullman Style Dining; a private compartment for four with dinner will cost £449. A standard ticket at £49 offers seating at tables where snacks can be purchased and picnics are welcome.

Both services will run from 4th June to 3rd September 2019 and will be pulled by Mayflower, a B1 Class Locomotive, with two cylinders, 6 driving wheels, a firebox grate area of 30 square feet and a top speed of 75mph.

Built for the London & North Eastern Railway in 1948, 61306 Mayflower is one of two surviving B1 Class locomotives.

Designed as mixed traffic locomotives capable of hauling express passenger trains as well as freight traffic, the B1s are powerful, go anywhere engines and worked across most of the UK rail network from East Anglia to Scotland.

Mayflower was built by the North British Locomotive Company in Glasgow but was delivered post-nationalisation and acquired the number 61306 by British Railways. She was first allocated to Hull Botanic Gardens Depot followed by a spell at Hull Dairycotes Depot before being finally transferred to Low Moor Depot, Bradford. She was the last B1 in service, her final trip was hauling the ‘Yorkshire Pullman’ from Leeds in September 1967.

Mayflower was immediately purchased for preservation and was initially based at Steamtown in Carnforth. She was fully restored for mainline operation and worked a number of railtours in the 1970’s. Acquired by Steam Dreams owner David Buck in 2014, she returned to the mainline in 2015 before being withdrawn for an extensive overhaul. Resplendent in the early British Railways apple green livery as she was originally given when delivered in 1948 she returned to full mainline operation in early 2019.