Wembley day best ever for rail firm
Wednesday 27th May 2009, 11:49AM BST.
The firm behind Shropshire’s direct rail link to London is celebrating after Shrewsbury Town’s trip to Wembley led to the biggest day in its history.
Staff at Wrexham & Shropshire helped 1,500 fans to make the trip down to London for the crunch play off against Gillingham last Saturday.
In just two hours, between 8am and 10am on Saturday morning, the trains carried the record-breaking amount of people to London with the majority going to Wembley Stadium.
On an average Saturday the Shrewsbury-based company would expect to carry 190 passengers.
The total included 46 wives, girlfriends and other family members of Shrewsbury Town FC players.
In order to make it all happen, some unusual people acted as train crew for the day. Visitors to the buffet on the 9.07am to London had their bacon sandwiches served by managing director Andy Hamilton, while marketing director Thomas Ableman checked tickets at Wembley Stadium. Even the chairman’s secretary worked in the kitchen on the 8.40am train.
As well as ensuring the whole management team was out working, the company also had support from the family and friends of staff who volunteered time for the day.
Meals in first class were cooked by the husband of the customer service manager, while steward Pat Burke worked alongside his girlfriend on several trains.
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Oh yes well done Wrexham and Shrewsbury rail link, we were on the 8.10am train it was just a perfect trip down to London, the train was over booked, there were not enough seats which lead to us and many other people having to stand for 4 hours cramped together the whole journey, really well worth celebrating!!!
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The word “celebrating” was not ours. We are proud of the enormous effort that our staff made in carrying this many passengers to Wembley, however we are acutely aware that a number of passengers did not have the journey they would have liked. Both myself and Andy Hamilton our MD were at Shrewsbury station throughout the morning and at Wembley Stadium station all afternoon. We had the right number of seats for the number of passengers, but because of inadequate boarding processes at the station, we ended up with too many passengers on the first few trains and spare seats on later trains. We will be working very closely with the station owners for any future events. Please be assured that we are never at all complacent. As a company we hate it if any of our passengers have a journey that does not meet our extremely high standards.
Thomas Ableman
Wrexham & Shropshire
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If shrewsbury had won i don’t think CAP would be whinning!
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I travelled on the 8.40 & can honestly say it was a wonderful way to travel.
Far less cramped than a coach, comfortable seats all with a table and coffe with bacon sandwiches on demand.
I would definitely recommend it and will use the service again to go to London.
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