The Vintage Trains story – the rise to a Train Operating Company – Mike Corbett

Our speaker was Mike Corbett who, after a lengthy career in the railway industry, started to volunteer a few years ago with the Vintage Trains group (VTG) at Tyseley, where he is now Group Tour Leader amongst other things.

The talk covered the Tyseley story from its antecedents (Pat Whitehouse’ involvement with the Talyllyn and the acquisition of 4555), then Clun Castle etc, and various name changes, from the early open days which attracted big crowds, and including the Birmingham Railway Museum phase and their own station from which its railtours commenced (now part of the new carriage shed).

Mike covered the current corporate structure of the Tyseley operation. Vintage Trains Charitable Trust (VTCT) sits above Tyseley Locomotive Works Ltd, which undertakes both in-house and third party locomotive contract work. Via its control of Vintage Trains Community Benefit Society (CBS), VTCT also controls Vintage Trains Ltd which is the entity which is licensed to operate trains. The locomotive assets are held in a separate charity, 7029 Clun Castle Ltd, which loans them to VTCT. There are a couple of diesels in the fleet, a 37 and 47. Jubilee “Kolhapur” and a Pannier were disposed of recently, resulting in a useful injection of funds.

Prior to 2016, trains were operated under West Coast’s licence, but when West Coast was put into purdah by the ORR after a safety related incident, they decided to get their own licence which prompted the establishment of the CBS and a major fundraising exercise from the public.

Their business suffered under Covid but VTG appears to be back to top form operating what seems to be a lot of trains this year with the long distance tours, the Shakespeares and Polar Expresses. Clun Castle runs out of ticket this year but the intention seems to be to overhaul it as soon as possible. The group aims to be profitable but running trains on the mainline is an expensive business these days, in part due to having to keep up with the regulations, such as central door locking etc.

The talk was well attended - we had an audience of 28 people.