“An illuminated steam train like no other”

Enjoy the famous and world first fully pixel mapped steam train. Amazing eye candy on the outside while inside it’s the ultimate on-board experience. An incredible Christmas show on rails.

where you can ride it

book for your railway

What makes this so unique?

Pixel Mapped System (thousands of LED's is under full control)

An exciting, interactive and immersive on-board music to light experience for all age groups.

Uniquely developed by a successful professional concert lighting designer who also volunteers as footplate crew.

A World First

When this was pioneered at the Watercress Line it was argued as a world first, certainly not the first train to be covered in colourful lights, but indeed the first steam train flanked with fully controllable pixels, this delivers a very exciting look both outside and inside the train.

Not only can the lights change any colour we wish but we have complete control individually as well. The LED’s are then “Pixel Mapped” which is where the system is told in the form of a grid where every single LED pixel sits in reference to each other, this then allows for amazing effects to be swept all over the train in complete harmony.

The world’s first steam train to have a full lightshow programmed to music by an experienced concert touring lighting designer.

Simon Horn Lighting Designer

Simon has been a full time professional lighting designer for over a decade now, having programmed shows up to and including arena and stadium level. Just like a “top link” footplate crew back in the day, lighting designers and programmers working on shows of this size and importance are doing so due to their experience, diligence and talent. Simon is a unique lighting designer of this calibre who loves working as a fireman on the footplate of a steam locomotive in his spare time!

Combining Simon’s knowledge of heritage railway workings and his profession is a winning combination here and thus delivering such an exceptionally exciting and intuitive take on the illuminated stream train. It’s a project built and driven by love and passion.

The Show In detail

The experience breaks down into four parts. The obvious external eye candy that draws in local and social media attention, line side illumination, internal immersive lighting including wearable lighting that becomes an interactive element and finally a DJ mix of Christmas music taking the passengers on a non-stop Christmas party journey. This Christmas DJ mix is complimented by entertaining commentary from the X factors legendary Voice Over Man who acts as the DJ and host for the evening. This is an incredibly fun journey, videos and pictures simply do not do it justice, below you can click on each design element to read and view more detail.

External Eye Candy

The main unique part of this design – full control of every LED hung on the side of the train making the ultimate ever changing eye candy train.

Lineside lighting

Creating stunning views for the passengers with high power wide angle colour floods that work in harmony with the light show.

Internal Passenger Experience

Voice Over Man, an epic DJ Christmas mix, Internal lighting effects and magical LED wristbands

All this comes together to one seamless incredibly fun professional Christmas show on rails. This design is heavily worked around giving an incredible onboard passenger experience. As the train departs at the first station passengers are welcomed by “Voice Over Man” he tells a joke and starts his DJ mix. Each section has a specific mix of music and synchronised lightshow, and so do the stations (station sequences do not include signal colours). The system is also loaded with a backup package of music and lighting that automatically runs should a train run slow and the section mix run out. As the train approaches/departs station boundaries (these are defined by the railway) the GPS system triggers the relevant sequence and Voice Over Man introduces these each time including some form of joke or interaction with the passengers, this makes for a seamless transition. As the journey completes the music builds to a grand finale and Voice Over Man delivers an uplifting goodbye resulting in applause from the passengers.

The focus of this show is the on board passenger experience. Passengers can head straight to their warm seats and the interactive show starts from there. Passengers get fantastic value for money with such an interactive and immersive journey along the way with a stunning lightshow projected onto the line side. At the half way point passengers can exit on to the platform and watch an external lightshow, or when top and tailing a lightshow can be projected onto woodlands in along with an audience participation section. This audience participation is thanks to the combination of narrative with wearable LED wristbands under full control of the show.