European Railroad Discussion > London around New Year's

I'll be at a conference in London January 2-5. Are there any nearby railfan events right before or after that? I won't have a car. Tia.

This site lists the upcoming steam excursions, which are plentiful, so you could see if any will be near where you are.

https://www.railwayherald.com/railtours

If model railways are of interest have a look at the "events" tab here https://www.ukmodelshops.co.uk/

Our "heritage" railways tend to run "Santa specials" in the run up to Christmas. Some will continue to run over New Year. This site http://www.heritage-railways.com/ has a map but you will have to work your way through the various links to find out. The map doesn't just show standard gauge railways; it includes places like the London Transport museum in Covent Garden.

Over Christmas and the New Year the national network tends to do a lot of MOW work. For instance, Paddington, which serves places like Didcot and Swindon is going to be badly affected. Normally a trip to the two sites in those towns would make an easy day out but.... The point is that if you pick somewhere away from the main London conurbation make sure you can get there, if you look at timetables available now they probably only go through to November. Wait until October and then check for the specific route you want try https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/ then follow the link to the company which operates the route and sell you a ticket.

Hartington Wrote:
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> Over Christmas and the New Year the national
> network tends to do a lot of MOW work. For
> instance, Paddington, which serves places like
> Didcot and Swindon is going to be badly affected.

That's a good point, around Christmas and New Year is often the time to get unusual diversions.

I just had a look here https://www.thetrainline.com/trains/great-britain/christmas-and-new-year#engineering which seems to be a good list of when trains are NOT running. I'm not a fan of buying from that website because, despite their advertsising, I don't believe they are any cheaper than buying direct from an operating company.

Looking at both GWR and LNER it would seem that all the MOW work will be finised by 1 Jan. That said I would be inclined to play safe and do any travelling after your conference.

With that in mind GWR, out of Paddington, can get you to Didcot whoich is home to the GWR society but whether they'll be open is another question. Didcot is also a quite good place to train watch but always remember our railway is passenger, not freight based. Despite that Didcot is a good place to see a few freights. Further down the line is Swindon which has a museum right next to an outlet centre(!) which I think has at least one locomotive in it.

The alternative is probably the National Railway museum in York. Longish day but doable an worthwhile.

Two places that are reasonably easy to get to are the Watercress Line (train Walterloo to Alton) or the Bluebell Line (Victoria ti East Grinstead) but neither has a program for Christmas, much less New Year, yet.

 

Using that link I can see that there will be very few freight workings through London over the post Christmas period, just those intermodal services too and from the London Gateway port on the Thames. The bulk of services too and from Felixstowe, Britain's biggest container port, will be diverted from Ipswich via Ely and Peterborough. So if you want a freight fix between Christmas and New Year I'd recommend a day trip to Peterborough from King's Cross. And if you want freight + semaphore signals, take the train one stop east from Peterborough to Whittlesey. There are no trains on December 25th and very, very limited service on the 26th.