Alice's Wonderland Express Steam Train Event

When & Where

Spa Valley Railway - 29th - 31st August - 5th - 6th September

Cast of Alice's adventure's in Wonderland

Overview

The first outing of Alice’s Wonderland Express Steam Train Event at Spa Valley Railway was a successful inaugural event and provided a valuable opportunity to test the show, guest journey, production requirements and operational model in a live environment.

The event benefited considerably from having access to the venue while it was closed to the public on Friday. This allowed the production team to complete the majority of the installation, technical preparation, costume fitting and rehearsals without pressure from the visiting public.

Importantly, several solutions were identified and successfully implemented between the first and second operating days. The second day demonstrated that relatively small operational changes could significantly improve the guest experience while reducing pressure on the cast and production team.

White rabbit at alices wonderland express steam train event

Production Team

The inaugural Steam Train Event event was delivered by a four-person production team:

On-site Event Lead: Tim
Production Assistant / Layout Designer / Props: Carli
Head of Costume: Hilda
Technical Production: Matt - Waggle

The team was subsequently joined by the four-person cast.

The production team worked closely with Spa Valley Railway staff throughout the event, in particular Laura, Spa Valley Event Manager, regarding train operations, catering, guest management and photography.

Site Setup and Rehearsal

The production team arrived on site at approximately 12:00 on Friday.

As Spa Valley Railway was closed to the public on Friday, the team had full access to the site. This was extremely beneficial and allowed the production to work without having to operate around members of the public.

Site and train installation

The team immediately began unloading and setting up the event, including:

Station decorations
Ticket office decorations
Train decorations
Ribbons
Window stickers
Hooks for paper chains
Alice in Wonderland entrance archway
General visual dressing of the station and train

The Alice in Wonderland Steam Train Event archway around the station entrance provided a particularly strong visual element and helped establish the event's theme immediately upon arrival.

Carli completed a significant amount of the station and train dressing and continued working on the decorative installation.

props at alices wonderland express steam train event

Costume and Cast Requirements

Hilda and the wider costume team successfully created costumes designed to be as universally fitting as possible.

This is particularly important if the event is to tour and use different casts.

"We took inspiration for the costume design from the many versions of Alice in Wonderland that have been created in a wide variety of mediums, and across many decades. We settled on a very recognisable aesthetic for Alice, and then a more naturalistic look for the Queen of Hearts, drawing inspiration for her costume from Queen Elizabeth 1st.

We used this period of dress for the shape and structure, and then pulled the colours from the Queen of hearts playing card. For the Mad Hatter, it was about imagining what he may have picked up on his travels and adding these bits to his iconic hat, while giving him some colour and pattern in his costume to add to his excentric personality.

The White Rabbits famous pocket watch led us to dress them in the style of a butler, with a nod to 1800s when the original book was written, where breeches would have still been worn for certain occasions and the bowler hat was a brand-new fashion item at the time.

The costumes were all either pulled from the stock we had from previous events, bought second hand, or custom made for this production specifically. This helped us pull together and create the exact look we wanted to enhance the characters portrayed by our actors."

Conclusion

The first outing should be viewed as a successful pilot and a valuable operational test.

The creative concept, cast interaction, costumes, catering quality, visual presentation and guest activities all demonstrated strong potential.

The key development now is to move from a production-led event to a repeatable touring event model.

The experience gained at Spa Valley Railway provides a strong foundation for this.

The next version should retain the elements that created the magic of the first Steam Train event while removing unnecessary complexity from the operational side.