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Plan a railway day out, follow the poster tradition or prepare your own photograph for print. Start with what you came to find.
Railway journeys
- Railway journeysTwenty-two lines, two viaducts, Santa trains and Flying Scotsman. Pick one, then plan the trip.
- The Polar Express train ride: where it runs in the UK in 2026.The Polar Express Train Ride is a licensed Christmas event that heritage railways stage on real steam trains, based on the 1985 picture book by Chris Van Allsburg. For 2026 at least…
- The Jacobite steam train, Fort William to Mallaig.The Jacobite steam train runs from Fort William to Mallaig and back, 84 miles along the West Highland Extension, operated by West Coast Railways. It crosses the Glenfinnan Viaduct, a…
- The Settle to Carlisle Railway, the long way north.The Settle to Carlisle Railway is 72 miles of track through the Pennine hills. It opened in 1876 and still carries regular trains over the Ribblehead Viaduct. It is the one railway…
- The Severn Valley Railway, Kidderminster to Bridgnorth.The Severn Valley Railway runs 16 miles between Kidderminster and Bridgnorth, through Worcestershire and Shropshire beside the River Severn. It opened in 1862, lost its passenger trains…
- The North Yorkshire Moors Railway, Pickering to Whitby.The North Yorkshire Moors Railway crosses the national park between Pickering and Whitby, a 24-mile run over open moor and down to the coast. The first section opened in 1835, and the…
- The Bluebell Railway, Sheffield Park to East Grinstead.The Bluebell Railway runs 11 miles through Sussex from Sheffield Park to East Grinstead. Each of its four stations is kept to a different period. This guide covers the line, the…
- The Snowdon Mountain Railway: the journey to the summit.The Snowdon Mountain Railway climbs 4.7 miles from Llanberis to the summit of Yr Wyddfa, 1085m up, and it is the only public rack and pinion railway in the United Kingdom. It was built…
- The Watercress Line: the Mid Hants Railway, and why it is called that.The Watercress Line runs 10 miles through Hampshire between Alresford and Alton, over the Mid-Hants Railway that opened in 1865. Its name comes from the crop it once carried to London.…
- The West Somerset Railway: twenty miles, ten stations.The West Somerset Railway runs 20 miles from Bishops Lydeard to the sea at Minehead, an old Great Western branch line that closed in 1971 and reopened in stages from 1976. This guide…
- The Keighley and Worth Valley Railway, Keighley to Oxenhope.The Keighley and Worth Valley Railway runs from Keighley up the valley to Haworth and Oxenhope in West Yorkshire. It opened in 1867, closed in the early 1960s and was reopened by its own…
- The Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland Railways, from Porthmadog.Two narrow gauge railways meet at Porthmadog Harbour: the Ffestiniog, climbing to Blaenau Ffestiniog, and the Welsh Highland, running to Caernarfon. Both are run by the same operator,…
- The Great Central Railway, Loughborough to Leicester North.The Great Central Railway runs eight miles between Loughborough and Leicester North on a former main line. The operator says it is the only heritage railway in the UK with double track,…
- The Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway, Cheltenham to Broadway.The Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway runs 14 miles from Cheltenham Race Course to Broadway through the Gloucestershire countryside. British Rail lifted the track in 1979, and…
- The Swanage Railway, Swanage to Norden by way of Corfe Castle.The Swanage Railway runs from the seaside town of Swanage through Herston, Harmans Cross and Corfe Castle to Norden, passing below the ruined castle on the way. The branch closed in 1972…
- The Llangollen Railway, Llangollen to Corwen.The Llangollen Railway follows the River Dee for 10 miles from Llangollen to Corwen in north Wales. The line closed in the 1960s, and the rebuild ran from a first open day in 1975 to…
- The Strathspey Railway, Aviemore to Broomhill.The Strathspey Railway runs from Aviemore through Boat of Garten to Broomhill. The operator puts the journey at about an hour and forty minutes, with views of the Spey valley and the…
- The Isle of Wight Steam Railway, Smallbrook Junction to Wootton.The Isle of Wight Steam Railway runs on about five miles of the old Ryde to Newport line, from Smallbrook Junction through Havenstreet to Wootton. Its oldest locomotive dates from 1876,…
- The Talyllyn Railway, Tywyn to Nant Gwernol.The Talyllyn Railway climbs more than seven miles from Tywyn on the Welsh coast to Nant Gwernol, on a narrow gauge of 2 feet 3 inches. It calls itself the first preserved railway in the…
- The Glenfinnan Viaduct, and where to watch the train cross.The Glenfinnan Viaduct is a curving row of 21 concrete arches on the line to Mallaig, opened in 1901, and the Jacobite steam train crosses it twice on every trip in the season. This…
- The Ribblehead Viaduct, on the moor above Ribblesdale.The Ribblehead Viaduct carries the Settle to Carlisle line across Batty Moss on 24 stone arches, 104 feet high at the tallest, and you can walk to its foot from Ribblehead station in a…
- Flying Scotsman: where it is, who owns it, and why it is famous.Flying Scotsman is a steam locomotive built at Doncaster in 1923, designed by Sir Nigel Gresley, and owned today by the National Railway Museum. It still runs, it still tours, and people…
- Santa trains and Santa specials in the UK, 2026.A Santa special is a heritage railway’s Christmas trip: a steam train ride with a visit from Father Christmas and a present for each child. Most run from late November to Christmas Eve,…
- The Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway, Hythe to Dungeness.The Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway runs 13 and a half miles along the Kent coast from Hythe to Dungeness, on rails only 15 inches apart. Its engines are built to a third of full…
- The East Lancashire Railway, Heywood to Rawtenstall.The East Lancashire Railway is a 12-mile heritage line from Heywood through Bury and Ramsbottom to Rawtenstall. It closed to passengers in 1972 and reopened in stages from 1987. This…
- The Vale of Rheidol Railway, Aberystwyth to Devil’s Bridge.The Vale of Rheidol Railway climbs from Aberystwyth up the Rheidol valley to Devil’s Bridge on narrow gauge track, behind steam. It opened in 1902 and was the last steam railway British…
- The Brecon Mountain Railway, Pant to Torpantau.The Brecon Mountain Railway runs narrow gauge steam trains from Pant, near Merthyr Tydfil, past Pontsticill Reservoir and up to Torpantau. It follows part of a railway that opened in…
The poster
- The posterSix guides to the railway poster. From booking hall to museum drawer.
- Vintage and retro railway posters, and where the look came fromVintage railway travel posters were printed advertisements, made to sell a destination from a booking-hall wall. Search for one and you mostly get shops. This is the reading instead:…
- Railway posters and train travel posters, from the platform to your wall.Railway posters are the advertisements Britain’s railway companies pasted up in stations from the 1840s onwards, and at their best, between the wars, they were some of the finest…
- Art deco railway posters, and the look of speed.Art deco railway posters are the flat, geometric travel posters of the late 1920s and 1930s, drawn around the streamlined trains of that decade. Think one hard diagonal, clean blocks of…
- GWR posters: the Great Western look.GWR posters were the Great Western Railway’s own advertising, and the GWR is the odd one out in the story. When Britain’s railways were squeezed into four big companies in 1923, it was…
- LNER posters: the decade of speed.LNER posters are the travel posters of the London and North Eastern Railway, made between 1923 and 1947, and most poster collectors will tell you they are the best of the lot. The…
- British Rail posters: the BR years.British Rail posters are the posters of the nationalised railway, from 1948 until the 1990s. For the first fifteen years they looked a lot like the old company posters, region by region.…
Your photograph
- Your photographGetting the file right comes first. Then the styles, then the size.
- Preparing a railway photograph for printThere is no name to set on this site, no date to add and no message field. You upload a picture and we print it, so the file is the entire thing you are buying. That makes preparing it…
- How big your photograph can really goSizes sound abstract until the parcel arrives. Two things decide which one is right: the wall it is going on, and the file you are working from. The second is not a matter of taste, so…
- Your photograph in an oil-painting style, and the four other stylesA commissioned oil painting means a fee and a wait of weeks. This is not that. You upload a railway photograph, the studio restyles it, and you see a watermarked version on screen before…
- Steam train pictures: one photograph, five studio stylesThe steam train picture worth hanging is usually one you took yourself. This page shows a steam scene in each of the five studio styles, side by side, so you can see what each does to…
The gift
- The giftEight guides, one per kind of present. From spotters to drivers and granddads.
- Gifts for train lovers, train enthusiasts and trainspottersSpotting is a record-keeping habit that happens to involve photography. That changes what makes a good gift, because the picture they are proudest of is often not the prettiest one in…
- Personalised train giftsMost personalised gifts mean a name added to something. Ours doesn't. There is no name field here, no date, no engraved message and no room for one. What is personal is the photograph,…
- Model railway giftsEverybody else on this site photographs something that already existed. A layout builder photographs something they made, often over years, and that changes the gift completely. It is…
- Train gifts and railway presents, from their own photographsAnybody who has been interested in railways for more than about a year owns the merchandise. The calendar, the book they were given twice, the mug with a stock locomotive on it. What…
- Steam train giftsSteam is the one railway subject that photographs itself. The exhaust does half the composition, the light does the rest, and the difference between a frame that prints beautifully and…
- Train gifts for menThe rest of this stage assumes a digital file exists. For an older enthusiast it very often doesn't, because the railway that matters to him is thirty or forty years back and lives in a…
- Gifts for train driversThe best gift for a train driver is a good photograph of the railway they actually worked: their traction, their route, their depot, ideally their last service. Most railway gifts are…
- Steam train experiences: driving days, footplate tasters and dining trains.A steam train experience is a day on a heritage railway as crew rather than passenger, or a meal served on a moving steam train. This guide sets out what several railways include, who…
On the wall
