GB Railfreight
14 mins ·
GBRf 2020 POSTPONEMENT
At GBRf Charity Railtours we are very proud of the fact that we have raised an incredible amount of money for great causes over the years, causes that genuinely change the lives of many. We now however live in a time where all of our lives have been changed, and where life may never be quite the same for a long time to come.
Over the past weeks and months during lockdown, the organisers of GBRf 2020 have considered carefully what the impact of the global pandemic may do to our operation, always taking into account and reviewing the latest government advice on social distancing and how it intends to release the UK from lockdown. It is still not clear what the rules in society will be come September, as the latest government advice suggests that this will be conditional on the UK passing a number of tests to reduce the alert level. But also, it’s worth noting that the alert level, and therefore the rules could well vary geographically. How we overlay any rules that may be in place onto a twelve coach train full of passengers is not clear. What is clear though, is that even if somehow by September that the pandemic has passed and relative normality is restored, the appetite for such travel is likely to have significantly diminished, either because of remaining concerns about contracting the virus, or not least because many of us may have suffered some level of financial hardship through the course of this summer. With all of the above in mind, and the ongoing uncertainty, it does not feel appropriate to continue to make arrangements for GBRf 2020 to take place this September.
All that said, whilst reviewing the latest information over the last eight weeks and coming to this decision, it was always in the back of our minds that if we arrived at this point, we would want to announce such a decision with a plan B. It is not in our nature to give up, and there is still very much the desire to deliver this operation at a later date. We also considered though that a short postponement for such a big operation would be unwise, given that a number of other railtour operations are now being postponed to later in the year - a large number of tours in a short timeframe would be unsustainable for both the number of people wanting to travel and their ability to afford to travel on them all.
As such, we are pleased to advise provisionally that GBRf 2020 (ish) – “This Time it's Personal” will now take place from Thursday 15th April to Sunday 18th April 2021. We intend to keep the itinerary broadly the same, though there were a few ideas we had originally that were scuppered by engineering work. We will need to review the operation against the engineering work planned for that weekend and expect there to be a few modifications/improvements which we’ll share over the coming months as and when confirmed. It would be remiss of us not to be clear that the re-dated operation is of course still conditional on the global situation. Let us all hope things are very different by the turn of the year. We will release tickets for sale when we are confident that we can run and will give plenty of notice of that date as things progress.
We have not taken the decisions above lightly, and we trust you understand why we have come to the conclusions we have. We are very grateful for your support and we very much look forward to you joining us in April next year.
The sad problem with the current situation, is that many charities have lost their funding streams as people are unable to raise money through their usual activities and many projects are stalling. Redating our train will have the same effect on what is potentially a huge donation to Prostate Cancer research funding. As this year progresses, GBRf Charity Railtours may still look to offer some of our more simplistic operations, similar to those we have done previously perhaps using the empty coaching stock moves from other operations. As the ability to do this becomes clearer over the coming months we will share details as soon as we can.
We hope that you and your families are all safe and healthy, and enjoy what you can of this summer.
The GBRf Charity Railtours Team
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