Railtours
This page and contents last changed on Monday 28 April 2025 at 00:33
Saturday 17 May 2025: HDL Blue Belle DEMU railtour
Our third railtour of 2025 is a visit to the preserved Bluebell Railway in West Sussex; it will run via London Victoria. For all details and booking instructions, please see the railtour’s own webpage.
Saturday 21 June 2025: HDL Wymondham Winder railtour
Our midsummer railtour is to Norwich, via Kensington (Olympia). For all details and booking instructions, please see the railtour’s own webpage.
Plans for future railtours
Possible dates for your diary (updated 25 April 2025)
20 September 2025: possibly to Warwickshire?
The trips outlined in this section are unavoidably subject to cancellation, modification, or change of date (except where stated to the contrary), until a trip is properly advertised.
When a railtour is ready for booking, it will be fully advertised further up this webpage. It will be also removed from this section. Those on our emailing list & our followers on Bluesky will receive notifcation.
No bookings or reservations will be accepted yet for any outing which is still shown in this section. This is to ensure everyone has a fair opportunity to make bookings. Shareholders (and occasionally passengers on a current railtour) are given a couple of days’ advance booking ahead of a railtour being fully advertised, for which this restriction does not apply.
Further information and resources
Code of Conduct
It is a condition of holding a ticket for any outing on our train that passengers abide by the letter and spirit of our Code of Conduct (updated May 2023).
Leaning out of windows
We continue to endeavour to keep our passengers safe by not allowing them to lean out of our train’s windows. This notice (updated January 2021) contains further information.
Booking Conditions
By travelling on an HDL railtour or buying a ticket to do so, you are deemed to be accepting our Booking Conditions as well as our Code of Conduct.
Accessibility Policy
HDL’s 1950s-built train may pose difficulties to certain classes of user: our Accessibility Policy describes what these are and how they may affect users.
Folding bicycles
It may be possible for you to bring your folding bicycle on the Hastings DEMU, with prior written approval; our guidelines on carriage of folding bikes will help you to determine your bike’s suitability for carriage.
Railtour Archive
We can recommend a dip into the HDL Railtour archive, which contains details of all the previous “days out” which HDL has operated to date; you may also find interesting our YouTube Channel which contains 32 cab-ride videos featuring outings during 2016–18.