As part of the Railway 200 celebrations, The Railway Touring Company will mark this historic milestone in railway history with a special train that will travel over part of the original route from Shildon and Stockton to Darlington.
On Saturday, October 4, 2025, the Railway 200 Special train will depart from London Kings Cross and make its way north along the East Coast Main Line picking up passengers at Potters Bar, Stevenage and Peterborough. The train will be hauled by celebrity blue liveried Class 86 electric locomotive ‘Les Ros’ to York where the train will be joined by an historic steam locomotive to travel north along the ECML to Darlington picking up further passengers.
From Darlington the train will run along the historic Bishop Auckland Tees Valley line, calling at Shildon, the world’s first railway town. Passengers will have the opportunity to visit Locomotion, the sister museum of the National Railway Museum. It houses the largest undercover collection of historic railway vehicles in Europe, including Robert Stephenson’s Locomotion No. 1 and Timothy Hackworth’s San Pareil.
The train will continue to Bishop Auckland to take the special link line to join the 18 mile Weardale Railway for a run as far as Stanhope. On the return journey along the Weardale Line the train will be diesel hauled to to Darlington, calling at Shildon to pick up passengers who chose to alight there. At Darlington the Railway 200 Special will reverse its direction of travel and run steam hauled once again northwards through Durham to Newcastle.
At Newcastle the train will turn via the Tyne bridges loop and head south, leaving the ECML to head along the freight line towards Stockton to rejoin the route of the historic Stockton & Darlington line as far as Eaglescliffe continuing south to Northallerton and back to York where it will leave the steam locomotive behind and return to Kings Cross and pick up points en-route hauled by ‘Les Ros’.