FIRST Railway Excursion. Loughborough Railway Station.
N 52° 46.741 W 001° 11.766
30U E 621672 N 5849213
Plaque to mark the FIRST railway excursion on 5 July 1841.
Waymark Code: WMV0TP
Location: East Midlands, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 02/04/2017
Views: 1
Mounted outside of Loughborough railway station to mark the first railway excusion by Thomas Cook from Leicester to Loughborough on 5th July 1841.
Thomas Cook would later become one the best known travel agencies.
Thomas Cook (22 November 1808 – 18 July 1892) of Melbourne, Derbyshire, founded the travel agency Thomas Cook & Son (popularly nicknamed Cook's Tours) that became Thomas Cook AG before eventually becoming Thomas Cook Group in 2007.
The first-ever excursions
Cook's idea to offer excursions came to him while "walking from Market Harborough to Leicester to attend a meeting of the Temperance Society".
With the opening of the extended Midland Counties Railway, he arranged to take a group of 540 temperance campaigners from Leicester Campbell Street railway station to a rally in Loughborough, eleven miles away.
On 5 July 1841, Thomas Cook arranged for the railway company to charge one shilling (5p) per person that included railway tickets and food for this train journey. Cook was paid a share of the fares actually charged to the passengers.
This was the first privately chartered excursion train to be advertised to the general public, Cook himself acknowledging that there had been previous, unadvertised, private excursion trains.
FIRST - Classification Variable: Item or Event
Date of FIRST: 07/05/1841
More Information - Web URL: [Web Link]
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