SEVERN Valley Railway have apologised for the problems fans encountered when trying to book tickets for the highly anticipated visit of the Flying Scotsman. 

Tickets to ride on the historic engine went on sale on Tuesday morning (April 5) at 9am, but more than an hour before users reported problems accessing the website – with those trying to purchase tickets greeted with an error message.

The website ran out of steam and hours after, tickets were only available by calling the box office or by visiting Kidderminster station.

The attraction has now sold out of the 7,000 tickets that were available for the Flying Scotsman and Tornado trains – but tickets are still available to ride on other trains operating during the Pacific Power event.

There are also no tickets available for the Charitable Trust day. 

SVR have now apologised to those who didn’t get tickets on their Facebook page.

The statement read: “The Charitable Trust day was always intended to be a special day to thank our charity supporters and to raise considerable funds for continued restoration projects and the funding of the Heritage Skills Training Academy.

“It was envisaged that any unsold tickets would be released to individuals who were unable to purchase a Flying Scotsman and Tornado Pacific Power ticket.

“As with the release of the Pacific Power tickets on the April 5, the charity was also inundated with their supporters wanting to be part of their special day on the 21st, and this day has now also sold out.

“We understand that this will be a huge disappointment for the large number of people that tried to book Flying Scotsman and Tornado tickets at the beginning of this week.

“The website is set up to sell tickets for all our special events; for example we sell over 30,000 tickets for our Santa trains using the site and telephone bookings.

“The massive spike in demand for Flying Scotsman and Tornado caused the site to fail; with up to 2,000 people trying to access the website every second, compared to an average of 90 the day before.

“The website was continually re-booted, but to no avail, therefore it was taken down.

“The two other avenues for ticket purchase remained open; telephone booking and in person sales. Whilst there is only one phone number to our Kidderminster Office, this transfers through to at least five telephones which were being constantly answered through the day, whilst the front desk had another team dealing with ‘in person’ sales.

“Both telephone and front desk teams took bookings through to 7pm on Tuesday.

Whilst I am sure that this is of little consolation, we are very sorry that we were not able to satisfy the huge demand for tickets.

“We also apologise for the failure of the website and we recognise that many people spent considerable time on their telephones and computers trying to get through.”

Severn Valley Railway is due to be one of the first lines in the country to host the Flying Scotsman following its £4.2 million renovation.

The locomotive will be the star attraction at the Autumn Steam Gala – Pacific Power – in September.

Flying Scotsman fans took to the SVR’s Facebook page to express their frustration following the news that all tickets had sold out.

Roz Hickman said: “One extremely disappointed family here. Had we have been given the opportunity to try to get tickets it would not have been so bad.

“But disorganised to the point of mayhem springs to mind. A totally wasted day for many, including myself.”

Marie Clayton added: “What an absolute disaster and disappointment on both the website and phone line.

“Having tried all day, hopes were temporarily raised when the website finally allowed me to pick a date and time, only for it to instantly crash again and then be told to ring the ticket office number instead.

“There was more chance of getting a golden ticket in a Wonka chocolate bar.”