The first Heritage Railway Association conference of 2025 will be held in a city with an exciting heritage rail future – Nottingham.
The HRA’s Spring Conference 2025 will be held in the centre of the ancient city on Tuesday, 4 and Wednesday, 5 March. It will feature a variety of high-quality speakers, great networking opportunities and the latest essential insights for everyone at the sharp end of the sector.
A specific focus on marketing is set to be on the agenda too, intended to help heritage rail trustees, directors and managers find new inspiration for their efforts to attract visitors to their railway, tramway or museum.
Nottingham is a hugely appropriate venue for a Heritage Railway Association conference, being the focus of the Great Central Railway’s ambitious reunification plans to link Leicester to Nottingham via Loughborough. It will reconnect the two ‘halves’ of the Great Central through a rebuilt section of railway through Loughborough and add a mainline connection to the popular line. The project has been described as the biggest heritage railway project in the UK.
Heritage Railway Association Membership and Business Development Manager, Jo Silsbury, said: “Our spring conferences are one of the biggest and most important events of the year for anyone involved in running a heritage railway. They give a great opportunity to get up to speed with everything that’s important in the sector at the start of the main operating season, and invaluable opportunities to network with colleagues from other heritage railways and tramways.
“Nottingham is a great location for the conference. It’s easy to get to by road or rail and of course it’s a city at the centre of one of the most exciting heritage railway projects of the decade.”
The venue for the HRA Spring Conference 2025 will be the Crowne Plaza, on Wollaton Street, Nottingham, close to the centre of the city. Bookings for the event are open now, with ‘early bird’ tickets on offer for early registrations. More information is available here.
The announcement of Nottingham as the venue for the next HRA conference comes hot on the heels of a hugely successful event in Torquay. Nearly 200 leading heritage rail people took part in the two-day conference on the south west coast that covered key issues such as funding and safety. Speakers included representatives from the Office of Rail and Road, Rail Accident Investigation Branch, Department for Transport and National Lottery Heritage Fund. The event also saw a panel of young leaders from the sector debating the future direction of heritage rail and how railways and tramways can take advantage of the changing visitor economy climate.
One of the attendees was the Llangollen Railway’s Peter Dickinson. Peter said: “It was my first time in attendance, and judging by how interactive, open, varied, honest and engaging the talks were, I look forward to enjoying many more in the coming years.”