Bluebell Railway | Giants of Steam | 16th-18th October 2026

Looks like I'll have to plan on attending on multiple days! Personally I think this is a great line-up of visitors, look forward to the timetable.

 

Generally Saturday and Sunday both have lots of varying action occuring. Last year there was a lineup of engines on Saturday. There were also lots of double headers on Sunday. I would recommend anyone who wants to experience all the action attends on both Saturday and Sunday. The timetable writer is clever and won't usually put the same combinations of locos double heading on multiple days. It's a deliberate trick to get people to attend multiple days, but it works on me!

The timetable for this event is not imminent, although I understand progress is being made. Keep your eyes peeled - maybe once the diesel gala is sorted - the timetable for that still needs releasing before Giants can be the focus of attention!

 

Timetable now available Giants_of_Steam_2026-PTT_FinalV2.pdf

 

Thanks for your ever-swift timetable sharing, Ben. Had been looking forward to planning this one and with the Spa Valley beer festival timetable and roster out now too I can fit the two together pretty neatly on the Friday (9F through the tunnel, few pictures of 71000 and 41313 then off to Groombridge to finally get 828!) before heading to the East Lancs next day.

Really like the look of the end of event 'mega train' on Sunday. Have very, very much enjoyed previous equivalents at Bluebell galas - the super-long sets with 80151 then the Manor + Hall at the end of the 2024 Branch Line gala and 50049 on 12 Mk1s and two dead Cl.20s at the 2017 diesel gala are both firmly in my all-time favourite heritage railway moments. Will need to be home on Sunday this time but certainly looking forward to videos of that and envy whoever grabs the front window out of Horsted Keynes on that final up train of the weekend!

 

According to the timetable everything faces North (East Grinstead). Is that correct? If so how/when was 80151 turned?

 

By lorry. The date on the Bluebell thread was that it was due to happen yesterday, but I haven't seen a photo to confirm.

Tom

 

Every locomotive will face north.

I sincerely hope that the timetable is correct; a lot and I mean a lot of time was spent in perfecting it and checking its accuracy and appearance.

 

It’s as if someone was listening to you

 

The reasoning behind it (that I’ve been told) is so that 80151 can be part of the line-up of Standards on Saturday at Horsted Keynes. It also means it can double head with the other engines and be facing the same direction, which massively eases the planning and timetabling for an event like this. The majority of Bluebell engines face north, up the 1/75 ruling grade towards East Grinstead. It’s also nice to see a change after some time