Railway 200: Demand crashes site just hours after tickets for Alstom rail festival go on sale

Alstom launches countdown to The Greatest Gathering three-day festival to celebrate Railway 200 at a media event featuring a number of locomotives including this one
-Credit:Derby Telegraph


Just hours after tickets went on sale for this summer's Derby rail festival run by city train maker Alstom "demand from around the world" caused the ticketing provider's site to crash and be suspended to sort out problems. The three-day festival called The Greatest Gathering is part of the 2025 national celebration of railways called Railway 200, which is celebrating 200 years since the first passenger train ran in the UK.

From August 1 to 3, Derby will be home to the UK's largest temporary gathering of historic rolling stock with more than 50 exhibits from the past, present and future of the railways.

After a media launch on Thursday (January 30), marking the start of the countdown to the event, tickets went on sale at 9am on Friday (January 31). But within a short time, problems began to emerge. One potential customer said they had "persevered for five hours to be greeted with error messages, queues that abandoned me, time-outs at checkout and just so slow generally".

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An Alstom spokesman said: "After yesterday’s fantastic announcement regarding The Greatest Gathering happening at our Derby site in August, our ticketing provider’s site struggled to cope with unprecedented demand from around the world.

"Even with a queuing system in place from mid-morning, this was not enough – and it will take time to secure additional capacity. With that in mind, we have made the decision to suspend ticket sales until we are confident that our provider’s servers can handle the expected web traffic.

"Rest assured, there are still thousands of tickets available across the three days and those who have already received a booking confirmation will receive their e-tickets in due course.

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"Details of when tickets will return to sale will be promoted on our website – www.alstom.com/greatest-gathering – and our social media channels.”

Alstom is linked to the company that made the first locomotive to run in 1825 – Locomotion No. 1. It was built by the Newcastle-based Robert Stephenson and Company. It was the first company in the world created specifically to build railway engines and later manufactured several of the first locomotives for other countries around the world.

Through successive mergers, Robert Stephenson and Company became part of Alstom in 1989, giving the company a direct link to the dawn of the railways and making it the custodian of a unique legacy.