A SIMPLY AWKWARD WEEK ADVENTURE

Tuesday 30th December 2025

It’s back – the latest in our series of perfect remedies to overcome the period between Christmas and New Year which we have come to know as ‘Awkward Week’. And its back with a vengeance with a spectacular tour around the suburbs of London featuring ever popular Class 37 locomotives and a very rare opportunity to visit Uckfield on a loco hauled passenger train.

Our day starts in Peterborough for pick ups along the East Coast Main Line as far as Finsbury Park. We then navigate our way via the now closed Primrose Hill station to the West Coast Main Line for the short sprint to Willesden, where we navigate the complex of lines that eventually take us to the Kew triangle. We are now on southern metals where we will spend most of the day visiting branches rarely visited by locomotive hauled trains in passenger service.

Our first destination however is London Victoria, providing those who enjoy a later start to their day to join the train without missing the tour’s highlights.

From here we embark on our first pair of branches – returning through Clapham Junction towards East Croydon and Purley where we negotiate the graded branch to Caterham. With our Class 37 locomotive hauling a trailing load of approaching 400 tonnes you can expect the local neighbourhood to be all too aware of the passage of our train.

After our reversal at Caterham, we return to Purley in preparation for the ascent to Tattenham Corner. This longer branch climbs yet further than Caterham so will present a sturdy test for our English Electric locomotive.

Having negotiated our first pair of branches we return to the Croydon area in order to access the branch towards East Grinstead. Of course, many charters have been routed this way as East Grinsted is the gateway to the Bluebell Railway, but Class 37’s are less common. All this though is merely the aperitif for what we hope will be the perfect entrée, as once we have returned to Hurst Green we begin the 25 mile journey towards Uckfield. Charters along this line are rare due to the number of stretches of single track so we may pause on occasion to allow service trains to pass, but the rarity of a locomotive hauled train on the buffers at Uckfield will be a memorable highlight for our passengers.

Mission accomplished we return to the London area before we begin to retrace our steps towards Peterborough via Clapham Junction, Gospel Oak and Harringay Curve. For those on board we have hopefully done our part to blow away the post-festive cobwebs and prepare you for yet another exciting year visiting both old favorite and more obscure destinations with UK Railtours in 2026.

We are very grateful to Rail Adventure, Europhoenix Rail Ltd, Loram UK Ltd, Eastern Rail Services and Network Rail for their kind assistance in facilitating this tour.

All timings are provisional and intended only as a guide.

A buffet car is available.

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