Northern Belle: Britain’s most luxurious train is set to steam through Calderdale this week

For 24 of the 200 passengers will be celebrating birthdays on the Northern Belle’s champagne lunch trip through the spring countryside.

Five of them will have notched up 80 years.

Meanwhile another seven couples will be raising a glass to mark their wedding anniversaries – from a first anniversary to a golden 50th.

And for former Huddersfield Town legend Keith Hanvey’s wife Julie it will be a double celebration.

For it’s her 60th birthday and her 40th wedding anniversary.

“She’s a very lucky woman,” smiled Keith, who was Leeds United commercial manager before retiring to work as a compere in the Elland Road match-day hospitality suites.

“We travelled on the Northern Belle a couple of years ago to mark my 70th birthday and it was a wonderful day out.”

A spokesman for the 1930s-style Pullman train joked: “We’d better order an extra supply of champagne for Keith and the rest of our guests.

“It looks like champagne corks are going to be flying everywhere.

“And our resident musicians are going to be playing ‘Congratulations’ over and over again as they stroll through the carriages.”

Passengers have a choice of a seven course lunch or a traditional afternoon tea during the six-hour journey which departs from Manchester and travels through Hebden Bridge to Brighouse.

There will also be a conjuror will visit every table.

Actor Bill Nighy described the Northern Belle as “the grand dame of luxury travel” during Channel 5’s The World’s Most Scenic Railways programme.

Then last year it was voted the ninth most luxurious train in the world – the only British entry in the top 10 – by readers of the prestigious Condé Nast Traveller magazine.

The Northern Belle, which is owned by Thurstonland businessman David Pitts, will be making several more trips from Yorkshire during the year, including one to Edinburgh hauled by legendary steam locomotive Flying Scotsman.

“That will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Britain’s most luxurious poshest train pulled by the world’s most famous locomotive is something not to be missed,” said the spokesman.