This page and contents last changed on Friday 8 March 2024
Our second railtour of 2024 covers 489 miles to Exeter, the county town of Devon. The leaflet contains further details.
Standard Class fares | seat in trailer coach (C/D) | £80 |
bay of 4 seats in trailer coach (C/D) | £300 | |
seat in motor coach (E) | ||
First Class fares | seat in trailer coach (B) | £103 |
seat in motor coach (A) |
This trip picks up at our usual stops from Hastings to Tonbridge, including also Crowhurst. After leaving Bromley South our train will take a somewhat circular route, calling at Kensington (Olympia) and joining the Great Western Main Line via the Poplar spur to our final call at Reading. We then run via the Berks & Hants line, passing Westbury, Cogload Junction and Taunton to reach Exeter where we climb the half-mile 1:37 ascent to reach Exeter Central.
Our return is via the West of England line to Salisbury, and then a diversion via Romsey, Chandler’s Ford and a reversal at Eastleigh to reach our next set-down stations of Basingstoke and London Waterloo. If you need to return to Reading or Kensington (Olympia), please arrange this travel as our DEMU won’t be returning that way!
Finalised timings have been published. Departures on the Hastings Line are 10 to 20 minutes earlier than shown in the original leaflet, while return times are very much as estimated.
Unfortunately, a late-notice line blockage at Andover has required our return journey to begin much earlier than we requested or expected. We examined several other options but none came to fruition; so we have been left with only around 90 minutes in Exeter instead of the 3 hours or more that we expected. Congestion on the single-line sections of the West of England line, and the diversion via & reversal at Eastleigh, have conspired against us on this occasion. We will have a photo-stop at Honiton on the return whilst awaiting our path, and another brief one at Eastleigh.
The leaflet has also been updated to show the finalised timings. To avoid any confusion, please ensure that you check these finalised timings prior to arranging your itinerary.
To illustrate the detail of our scheduled route, an annotated extract from Network Rail’s Sectional Appendix has been produced for the outward and return portions of this railtour (updated 7 March 2024).
Fares, estimated timings, further details and booking-instructions may be found in the leaflet; please check our Seat Availability Guide before making your booking. We support paperless booking, so please use it if you can.
Book by email: Please check our Seat Availability Guide, then complete the PDF form on your computer or device, save it, and email it to us. Payment may be made via the Faster Payments system in your online banking, using HDL’s payment details which are defined at www.hastingsdiesels.co.uk/payments; one payment per booking, please.
Book by post: If the above is not workable, you may still use the original method in which you check our Seat Availability Guide, then complete the form on your computer and then print it (or print it and then fill it in by hand); then post it to us together with your cheque made payable to Hastings Diesels Limited.
The finalised timings have been published, and the leaflet has been updated to suit. Unfortunately the return portion of our journey from Exeter has to begin at 14:40, giving us considerably less time there than we intended. Please see above for explanation and further details.
Please check our Seat Availability Guide for the most accurate and up-to-date information regarding seats that are available for booking on this railtour.
Tickets are sold subject to our Code of Conduct and Booking Conditions. Children under 16 must be accompanied by a responsible adult. Smoking or vaping are not permitted anywhere on our train, and e-scooters may not be brought onto the train under any circumstances. Bicycles cannot be carried, except folding bicycles with prior approval. Please consult our Accessibility Policy.
Thank you for supporting our railtours in 2023 and beyond.
Details of, and booking-instructions for, our future railtours will appear here when they are available; when that happens, those on our emailing list & our followers on Twitter will receive notifcation.
8 June 2024: to Skegness, if (and only if) we are given viable timings
13 July 2024: to Leicester, Loughborough and Derby (plans are progressing)
14 September 2024: to the Gloucester area??
These outline plans are unavoidably subject to cancellation, modification or change of date (except where stated to the contrary), until a trip is properly advertised.
No bookings or reservations will be accepted for any outing shown in this panel, unless you have received a letter or email from HDL pre-advertising a particular trip. This is to ensure everyone has a fair opportunity to make bookings.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.