Bluebell Railway Giants of Steam 17th-19th October 2025

Due to arrive into the connecting siding at 19:17, after which the rough timings are as follows:

EG dep: 19:25
KC arr: 19:33
KC dep: 19:35
HK pass: 19/50
SP arr: 20:05

It will be running tender first from Battersea

 

I must confess the Saturday timetable is a bit of a pain for those of us visiting by train. I've got a reasonable journey to make, and was planning to arrive at EG at 10:20 and leave again at 16:06. Those timings have worked well in the past, leaving me enough time for a worthwhile amount of travelling / viewing etc at the railway. On this occasion, it works OK in the morning - I should be able to catch the 10:45 with 2999 - but in the afternoon it doesn't. 6880 is due to arrive at 15:55, but that's too tight a connection to rely on at a gala. However, the previous arrival is at 2:15, i.e. 100 minutes previously. Doing that would make my visit too short to be worthwhile. For various reasons, I don't want to stay there later, and I can't switch to another day - the train travel to get there is far more expensive on the Friday, and options are too limited on a Sunday timetable.

All in all, whilst the "line-up" is a good idea in principle, it's unfortunate that they've chosen to do it on the day when more people will want to connect to/from the mainline at EG than on the other two. Sadly, I think they'll be losing my custom on this occasion as a result.

(Edit - I've also just noted that it leaves SP without an arrival from 14:05 to 16:05, so anyone travelling by car and wanting to get away from there at around 15:30-16:00 is similarly stuck)