The first locomotives have been confirmed for The Greatest Gathering, set to be held at Derby Litchurch Lane in August.
Tickets for the festival to celebrate 200 years of the railway are now on sale for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd August 2025. To purchase your tickets, please click here to visit the Alstom website.
Yesterday (30th January), RailAdvent was invited to the official launch of The Greatest Gathering, with some of the confirmed guests in attendance. You can read more in our article by clicking here.
The first locomotives confirmed to attend are (Alstom have also noted that examples from the same class may substitute):
- LNER A4 No. 60007 Sir Nigel Gresley – courtesy of the Sir Nigel Gresley Locomotive Trust and Locomotive Services Group
- SR Merchant Navy No. 35018 British India Line – courtesy of West Coast Railways Co
- BR Class 37 No. 37800 Cassiopeia – courtesy of Rail Operations Group
- Class 50 No. 50049 Defiance – courtesy of the Class 50 Alliance
- Class 57 No. 57307 Lady Penelope – courtesy of Direct Rail Services
- Class 66 No. 66315 – courtesy of GB Railfreight
- Class 69 No. 69004 – courtesy of GB Railfreight
- Class 507001 – courtesy of the Class 507 Preservation Society
- Class 390016 (renumbered 390200) – courtesy of Avanti West Coast
- Class 701 No. 701003 – courtesy of South Western Railway
- Class 720 No. 720503 – courtesy of Greater Anglia
Tickets are now on sale and cost £30 for adults and £15 for children, and a family ticket costs £65, and all profits will be split between Alzheimer’s Research UK, Railway Benefit Fund, Railway Children, Railway Mission and Transport Benevolent Fund CIO – and charitable railway heritage partners. To purchase your tickets, please click here to visit the Alstom website.
“Since 1825, Alstom has played a pivotal role in shaping rail innovation and our Litchurch Lane site remains at the heart of that legacy. This event is about bringing people together to reflect on what we’ve achieved collectively and to inspire the next generation to push the boundaries of what’s possible in sustainable transport.”
Gian Luca Erbacci, Europe Region President at Alstom
Responses
Is it prebook only, pain if so for those who can’t plan that far ahead
I’ve got to the checkout 4 times only for the site to crash.
I would have hoped by now that they might have got it sorted 🙁
Yeap you sue can do, as both are available in model form you could try it out and scale up to get a real world value.
From looking at the picture these two share a very similar profile, I wonder what there respective drag coefficients are?
Im not sure if drag coefficients are calculated for a steam loco, but you can certainly see where the inspiration came from
Getting tickets is a complete joke.
The website is very bad 👎
Crashes all the time after waiting near 2hour then it stops working
Really not good enough
The ticket website is dreadful. I have been repeatedly stopped at various stages of attempting to buy tickets. Repeatedly putting tickets in basket and then given time out errors when trying to pay. I only want one ticket and shop gives me two. I’m lucky to be working from home today and have been on this since 9.30. The queue system does not work for me.
I’ve given up trying to get tickets for the event as its such a farce due to the problems with the booking.
Shame really as I’d have loved to see some of the stuff that’ll be shown off at the event.
Lots of people are still having trouble booking tickets, their website still cannot cope, despite the queue system.
There are thousands of tickets available for each day, so perhaps try again in a few hours
90 minutes in the queue, put ticket into basket only for the site to crash and end up in the queue again. This is fun
I got to the ticket page & put in my order for 2 tickets & the site crashed. I’ve had to go back to the beginning of the queue now. Not impressed.
It does seem strange they have a queue system, but are obviously still letting too many people through. Be much better to keep people waiting a little longer and have capacity for those they do let through
The ticketing company website has gone from “bad gateway” to a “404 forbidden” and to warnings of insecure site which might be trying to steal Your information. This is really poor. Someone get a grip!! Getting Taylor Swift tickets was easier!!!!!!
Yes it seems they underestimated the demand. However Mortons do seem to have implemented a queue system now on their website.
Yes, I queued for over an hour and was then told to try again later