Families going loco for Telford Steam Railway's Polar Express

Volunteers at Telford Steam Railway knew they had to do something special to bring people in this Christmas after losing the Thomas the Tank Engine licence several years ago.

Despite the risk and hard work involved in getting The Polar Express on the rails, the event has been a runaway success and the team is already looking how to improve its offerings in 2017 – including adding several more days.

Julia Hughes, one of the organisers of the event, said it was all worth it to see how excited children have been to get on the train, meet Santa and relive their favourite scenes from the popular film.

The 36-year-old said: "We had Thomas the Tank Engine for a long time. We wanted to see what else we could do to get people in. We have seen more than 1,000 people a day over three weekends.

"We knew we had to step up to the plate and do something different though. A lot of railways do Santa events, but what else could we achieve? It's been 12 months of hard planning, discussions and decoration making, but at the end of our first five nights we all got together and said 'we've cracked it'.

"Now we're looking at next year – what else can we add? I've been asking if people will come next year, and they've asked when they'll be able to book.

"We sold 14,000 tickets and we still have people asking if there are any places left this year. We've had to keep saying we're sorry, and we're very aware that early 2017 we've got to get those bookings open and say how much tickets will cost."

The Polar Express has been expensive to run, but Julia feels it has been worth it.

But even with careful planning, there have been a few surprises. She said: "We know Polar Express is expensive to run. We buy a lot of the merchandise in dollars and with Brexit and Trump, the dollar has not helped us. It's added quite a few thousand pounds on.

"But we've been very careful when we've done our pricing. This is the first year we've done it so we had no idea what people would put their hand in their pocket for. It's been a steep learning curve."

The Polar Express itself was originally built in Philadelphia, in America. When the organisers went to the owner and explained why they needed the train, they were very quick to say yes.

Julia said: "The locomotive and the three carriages fit perfectly. Thankfully, it's all come into position really nicely, but it's a big loco."