Railway 200: When tickets will go back on sale after demand crashed site for Alstom rail festival

-Credit:Derby Telegraph
-Credit:Derby Telegraph


Ticket sales for this summer's Derby rail festival run by city train maker Alstom will resume on Wednesday morning (February 5) at 9am - five days after sales were suspended when the ticket provider's site crashed following "demand from around the world".

Many people complained they could not purchase their tickets for three-day festival called The Greatest Gathering, which is part of the 2025 national celebration of railways called Railway 200 - celebrating 200 years since the first passenger train ran in the UK.

Alstom has now issued confirmation that sales will resume tomorrow via its website here. Alstom is using a new ticketing partner, Nottingham-based See Tickets.

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An Alstom spokesman said: "Those who managed to secure a ticket last week before we temporarily suspended sales will automatically receive replacement e-tickets in due course from the new booking system."

Problems began when tickets went on sale at 9am last Friday (January 31). 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".

Announcing sales would be suspended, 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.

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"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."

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.

Tickets are priced at £30 for adults and £15 for children (ages five to 15), with a family ticket (two adults and two children) costing £65 – plus booking fees. Children under five go free.

All profits will be split between Railway 200’s five chosen charities – Alzheimer's Research UK, Railway Benefit Fund, Railway Children, Railway Mission and Transport Benevolent Fund CIO – and charitable railway heritage partners.