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New Luxury Sleeper Train for 2025 in England and Wales

Belmond Trains (the operator of the Orient Express) are to run a new luxury sleeper train next year- The Brittanic Explorer with 3 night trips to the Lake District, Cornwall and Wales, all from London Victoria.
The train will be stationary each night.

The Wales route (West Wales and the Cambrian Coast) returns via Moreton in Marsh.

As far as I am concerned having a luxury train come up the Cumbrian Coast to Workington is very exciting. The land excursion from there to Penrith is as much because the train doesn't fit loading gauge restrictions with passengers on board. No doubt that has been orchestrated by a very active Transport Heritage Group who have turned the station into a living Museum.

As you can imagine these trips are not at all cheap, but very interesting.

https://www.belmond.com/trains/europe/uk/britannic-explorer/journeys

Posted by
176 posts

It looks absolutely fabulous, but way above my price point unfortunately :(

Posted by
1377 posts

These aren't so much luxury sleeper trains as luxury rail-based tours. The expense is eye-watering.

Posted by
8505 posts

You sleep on board the train, so it is a sleeper train.

This is not like the Rocky Mountaineer in both Canada and the US where you have transfers to hotels each night (and very early starts the next day, so no time to explore the overnight city). Not a model which appeals to me personally.

That is another train which I consider to be vastly overpriced, but is enormously successful. The Moab train especially spends a very long time going nowhere very far, but gets rave reviews.

This is the same kind of price as the very successful Belmond Royal Scotsman Train in Scotland (where you also sleep on a stationary train each night) and the Orient Express. There is a definite market out there for such trains.

This train set originally ran in Ireland as the Grand Hibernian until stopped by Covid.