A TV STAR’s praise for a luxury Northern train service to Carlisle crashed the company’s website as would-be passengers clamoured for a booking.

British Hollywood star Bill Nighy presented a Channel 5 programme about a steam-hauled journey to Carlisle which featured the Northern Belle luxury train.

Passengers were filmed sipping champagne after boarding the Northern Belle – described as “the Grand Duchess of luxury trains” – at Preston station before an 88-year-old locomotive called “Princess Elizabeth” hauled it to the city.

The star of Harry Potter and Shaun of the Dead later visited Carlisle’s twelfth century Gothic cathedral which he called “a masterpiece of medieval architecture.”

Nighy was also given a tour of an underground storage area 40 feet below Carlisle Train Station.

Passengers of the Northern Belle ate a five-course dinner as the luxury train left Carlisle to cross the Ribblehead Viaduct towards Settle, viewers were so taken by the scenes that they visited the website in droves. There were so many people trying to book a journey that the Northern Belle website could not cope and displayed a “502 Gateway Timeout” error message.

David Pitts, who owns the train said: “We are very sorry the website crashed but we were amazed by the response to the TV programme.

“So many people wanted to book a trip on the Northern Belle that the system just couldn’t handle it. Fortunately, we soon got things running again.”