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Saturday 27 September 2025 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of the modern railway, when George Stephenson drove Locomotion No. 1 on its inaugural journey from Shildon to Stockton-on-Tees via Darlington, to great fanfare. The 26-mile journey was a landmark moment in public transport and the springboard for the great Victorian age of the railways, transforming how the world traded, travelled, and communicated.

Anchored by resident train enthusiast Petroc Trelawny, Radio 3 is celebrating this historic occasion by travelling from Inverness to London on the Highland and East Coast Main Lines, aboard the Highland Chieftain, one of the longest direct train journeys in the UK.

Over the course of the eight-hour, 581-mile journey, Petroc will provide updates from the train as it speeds south. He’ll be joined by fellow Radio 3 presenters at stations along the route, including Tom Service at Pitlochry, Tom McKinney at Edinburgh Waverley, Elizabeth Alker at Darlington and Georgia Mann at King’s Cross.

For the Train Tracks’ grand finale at Kings Cross station, Georgia Mann celebrates the London transport hub as Petroc heads towards the city. There’s train-inspired music from Vivian Ellis, Meredith Monk and Heitor Villa-Lobos, as well as more historic and evocative locomotive recordings from the National Railway Museum archive.

Georgia’s special guests include the architect Colin Bennie from John McAslan and Partners, the architects who transformed Kings Cross back in 2012, and she’ll be joined by jazz trumpeter Poppy Daniels and friends who will grace the station concourse with live music.

There’s also a look to the future of train travel with Dr Debbie Hopkins, Associate Professor in Human Geography at the University of Oxford and Tom Cheesewright, an Applied Futurist.

Plus, composer Jasper Dommett will introduce their new piece All Change!, a world premiere commissioned and specially recorded by the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Scottish Symphony Orchestra.