I have set myself a challenge over the next few months – to find the most unusual setting where Charles Dickens is mentioned after researching about him for Four Centuries at The Lion Hotel.
I reported yesterday about Dickens mania with the 200th anniversary of the birth of the great author in a couple of months' time and how he was even referred to recently on Ian Hislop’s BBC One programme When Bankers were Good.
I thought that link was obscure. But last night I beat that when my wife, Jan, and I went to an evening about the Trans Siberian Express in the imposing ballroom of the Crown Hotel in Stone High Street.
We saw a presentation by GW Travel about Voyages of a Lifetime by Private Train with superb trips all around the world.
The room was full of about 30 invited guests by Regent Travel of Stone who were all interested in the Moscow to Vladivostok trip on board the Golden Eagle Trans Siberian Express train.
We were enthralled to see photographs of Kazan, Listvyanka, Mongolia, Lake Baikal in Siberia, pictured below, Irkutsk, Novosibrsk, Yekaterinburg, and many more exotic places.
The presenter, John, told us that Tim Littler, the President and Founder of GW Travel Limited, had been fascinated all his life by train travel.
As an eight-year-old school boy, he and his friends would visit Altrincham railway station in 1958 to watch the procession of steam hauled express trains which at that time were being diverted through Altrincham on their journeys to and from London and the south.
In January 1963, aged 12, Tim took over the operation of Altrincham Grammar School’s Railway Society and in February ran his first bus tour to Crewe locomotive works.
Combining his knowledge and passion of rail with his enthusiasm for travel he successfully operated his first rail tour, aged 16, carrying 350 passengers from Manchester to Edinburgh on April 23, 1966.
Three other tours followed in quick succession – Manchester to Holyhead, Kings Cross to Newcastle and St Pancras to Altrincham. The latter two included using The Flying Scotsman.
On leaving school Tim joined the family wine business, Whitwhams, becoming Managing Director in 1975.
During this time the company established a world wide export business, purchased a fine wine negociant business in Bordeaux, and also broke the world record sale price for a single bottle of wine - £125,000, which remains a world record to this day.
With rail and travel still close to his heart, in 1989 Tim formed GW Travel. The name retains a link with the family firm as GW stands for Gerald Whitwham – who founded the company in 1788.
Wine and travel operated in tandem for the next few years, GW Travel concentrated on providing specialist steam tours in Eastern Europe, and when Russia finally opened its doors to foreigners in 1992, Tim began running rail tours through the Caucasus and Crimea.
Tim needed someone in Russia, who could speak fluent English and knew about the railways over there, not an easy task in 1992.
He met Marina Linke, who was working for the North Caucasus Railway, and was impressed by her standard of English.
He asked her how she had learnt English during the Communist era, a time when it would be frowned upon to learn such a Western language.
She told Tim she had learned English by reading Charles Dickens books.
Today Marine is Operations Director of GW Travel Limited.
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