To celebrate Heritage Open Days, Railway 200 and Bradford 2025 City of Culture, Rail Story offered a number of activities across the weekend of 13-14 September 2025, courtesy of the Vintage Carriages Trust.

On both days, entry to the Carriage Works and Engine Shed museums was free and there were special tours of the workshops throughout the day.

The following was also on offer:

Saturday 13 September:

• ‘Bahamas: The Story of a Locomotive’, a special one-hour long talk by Pete Skellon in the Learning Coach
• Learning Coach exhibition, including screenings of a short film by Scott Coulthard Video

Sunday 14 Septmeber: 

• Family activities in the Learning Coach
• Meet George Stephenson: engineer and designer of The Rocket, a steam engine designed to change the face of steam travel in the UK. We found out how he entered his new design in the Rainhill Trials, a race for the honour of having the winning engine dominate the Liverpool and Manchester Railway.
• Short performance sketch featuring Branwell Brontë, the only son of the famed Brontë family, as he faces a grilling from the host of a tongue-in-cheek TV game show about the reasons he was dismissed as a station clerk on the Leeds and Manchester Railway.

This event was part of Heritage Open Days, England’s largest festival of history and culture, and is presented by an organisation involved in Bradford 2025’s Elevate programme, which aims to strengthen, sustain and increase the agility of Bradford’s heritage sector.