Rail Live 2018

£0.5 billion of rail plant, 5,000 visitors and 239 exhibitors created Britain’s biggest rail industry show in June.

To bring visitors to Rail Live from the South East, RAIL organised a dedicated special train from London Paddington into a platform at the show at Long Marston.

The train was operated by GB Railfreight (which also handled ticketing through its charity rail tours website). It was made possible thanks to Network Rail and Great Western Railway in planning and staffing the train and associated planning.

The train consisted of the restored 90mph 4TC Mk 1 set owned by the London Transport Museum, top-and-tailed by a pair of GBRf Class 73/9 locomotives. It made a return trip on both days of Rail Live, departing from Paddington at 0714 and running via Reading and Oxford to Honeybourne, where the train traversed the 2 ½ miles of normally non-passenger branch line to QRTC. The train then returned at 1445 each day.

On June 20 the train had to be cancelled at Evesham on the return journey due to a failure on the 4TC that required repairs at Eastleigh Works.

Passengers were transferred to a Great Western Railway train for the final leg to Paddington. GBRf then took the 4TC to the Hampshire site that evening and collected four Riviera Trains Mk 1s to operate the next day’s charter.

Plans are already under way for providing direct trains for 2019, so keep an eye on www.raillive. org.uk for more information in the coming months.