{"id":523508,"date":"2026-04-10T15:13:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T15:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/523508\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T15:13:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T15:13:12","slug":"tourism-worries-after-delay-to-new-harry-potter-train-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/523508\/","title":{"rendered":"Tourism worries after delay to new Harry Potter train season"},"content":{"rendered":"

WCR supplied film-maker Warner Bros with the locomotive and carriages for the Hogwarts Express in the Harry Potter film series.<\/p>\n

The West Highland Line’s historic Glenfinnan Viaduct also featured.<\/p>\n

The rail journey has been described as one of the world’s most scenic<\/a>, and is popular with railway enthusiasts as well as film fans.<\/p>\n

WCR was in a long-running dispute<\/a> with the ORR about having to install central locking on its Mark 1 carriages to prevent passengers from opening doors when the train is moving.<\/p>\n

Boss James Shuttleworth told BBC Scotland News the system would be installed, but this would take time and it had applied for an exemption to use the carriages meantime.<\/p>\n

He said exemptions had been successfully secured in the past, with stewards manually locking doors.<\/p>\n

Shuttleworth said for a few seasons it had used more modern Mark 2 carriages, which have central locking.<\/p>\n

But he said a decision had been made not use them this season because of their reduced capacity, and that they also require a diesel locomotive at the back to provide power to an air conditioning system.<\/p>\n

He said using Mark 2s had resulted in lost income, and customer feedback showed a preference for the Mark 1 carriages.<\/p>\n

Shuttleworth said details on the start of the new season would be released as soon as they were available.<\/p>\n

The ORR said no agreement had been reached on an exemption and the application was being reviewed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WCR supplied film-maker Warner Bros with the locomotive and carriages for the Hogwarts Express in the Harry Potter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":523509,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-523508","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=523508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/523509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}