European Railroad Discussion > The Britannic Explorer

Belmond, the luxury hotel & leisure group, is about to launch the Britannic Explorer cruise train in England & Wales. Starting on Monday the train did a shakedown run of it's four day, three night Welsh itinerary, which I shot passing Craven Arms on the Marches Line on Tuesday afternoon. Belmond are offering three itineraries, to Devon & Cornwall in SW England, to Wales and to the Lake District in NW England, all four day three nights, which you can combine for eye watering prices. All start and finish in London.

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

The train itself is interesting, made up of 10 cars originally converted by Belmond for cruise train service as the Grand Hibernian in Ireland in 2016. The Grand Hibernian never reappeared after Covid and the cars were moved to Britain and stored, pending their reuse. The cars themselves are based on the BR Mk3 design, built in quantity by BREL at Derby & by CIE/IE under licence at Inchicore, Dublin between 1980 and 1989. When the Mk3s were withdrawn by IE, Belmond acquired 11 examples and converted 10 of them into luxury bar-lounge, restaurant and sleeping car configurations for the Grand Hibernian, the eleventh was retained for spare parts. They are different to BR's own Mk3s in having automatic plug doors, a different electrical system and, of course, ran on 5'3" gauge versions of BR's BT22 truck. I don't know whether they have kept their original trucks, suitably re-gauged or had them swapped out for redundant standard gauge examples. 

The birth of the Britannic Explorer has been somewhat troubled, as part of the refit a central door locking system has been fitted and problems with it has caused a number of trial runs, with and without paying passengers, to be cancelled. But this shakedown run appears to have been successful (so far).

Power for the train is provided by GBRf which has repainted 66748 in matching Britannic Explorer livery. For the section of the Welsh itinerary from Shrewsbury to Pwllheli and back, over the former Cambrian Railways, 66s are banned so a pair of Network Rail's class 97s (37s in bright yellow) will be used instead.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/19/25 23:19 by 86235.

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Nice catch, Nik. I'm still waiting for this to reach Yorkshire! Were there any fare paying punters on this, or was it just another test run.  Chris uk.

55002 Wrote:
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> Nice catch, Nik. I'm still waiting for this to
> reach Yorkshire! Were there any fare paying
> punters on this, or was it just another test run.
>  Chris uk.

No paying punters, just Belmond staff & guests apparently. If it gets back to London tomorrow in one piece I believe the first commercial outing will be to Devon & Cornwall, with another trip to Wales pencilled in for September 1st. 

That is my kind of train!  Sure wish I could cross "the pond" and ride it.
ALLEN

krm152 Wrote:
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> That is my kind of train!  Sure wish I could
> cross "the pond" and ride it.
> ALLEN

You can do the same journey, but without the wellness suite and the clay pigeon shooting excursion, with a Transport for Wales rover ticket, for about 0.2% of the cost of the Britannic Explorer 🤣