Hampton Kempton Waterworks Railway based at the Kempton Waterworks in south-west London is getting ready for next month’s Santa Specials weekends.

The Santa Specials are planned to run on Saturdays and Sundays 9 and 10, and 16 and 17 December, with trains running on each day from 3.30 to 7.30 pm hauled by classic 120-year-old heritage locomotive Darent.

To match the mood of the season, Darent will be decorated in fun, festive lights as Santa sleighs into the railway with his elves.

Tickets to travel on the Santa Specials include a hot chocolate, tea or coffee, mince pies, and soft drinks, and cost £8 for adults and children aged 13 years. Tickets for children aged 3 to 12 years cost £10, but include a Christmas gift for every child. Children under 3s go free, but if guests want them to have a gift it will be necessary to buy a £10 ticket for them.

It is necessary to make an advanced booking to buy tickets for the Santa Specials, and they can be obtained from the railway’s website here, along with other information about the railway.

As well as enjoying the fun of meeting Santa and his elves, there is also the added attraction of Kempton Steam Museum with enormous steam-powered pumping engines that used to pump the water from the waterworks into the public water supply.

The railway dates back to 1915, when an industrial railway was laid to carry coal from wharves on the River Thames to Kempton Waterworks, which provided clean drinking water to parts of London in the early years of last century. It now provides the special experience of travelling by steam train on one of the few narrow-gauge railways located within the M25 motorway.