I’ve now had time to gather my thoughts after a 2 hour-ish drive back last night and a twelve hour day today.
I should preface this as saying it was my first BLS Tour so I didn’t really know what to expect and our general conclusion was that whilst decent value for money it wasn’t the kind of trip I would do again.
It was notable in our coach that three different groups left the train throughout the day, realising that the trip wasn’t quite what they expected it to be and, in all honesty, I had similar feelings.
On these types of trips, in order of priority, I am generally looking for the following:
1. Seeing locos / units / etc
2. Getting different types of haulage
3. Photo opportunities
4. New track
The trip was billed as including (and I’m paraphrasing) visits to Road 5 of Birkenhead North Depot, Southport Carriage Sidings and Kirkdale Sidings.
The Birkenhead aspect was really disappointing. We were sat within 140 which didn’t enter the shed whereas 141 did and, whilst I understood the reasons why, it was clear that a number of people weren’t overly interested seeing inside the shed whereas I was. This was due to be a real trip highlight to me but actually made it quite sour.
Southport was excellent.
Kirkdale, liked Birkenhead North, was also a waste of time in terms of point 1.
I think, perhaps, what I have realised is that BLS Tours aren’t quite my thing and I would have reservations of doing one again. That’s not in any way to denigrate the excellent work done by the BLS Team, Volunteers and MerseyRail staff on the day. They did an excellent job and a good sum was raised for charity.
6/10