LNER Railway200 – The next train to arrive at the BBC Breakfast sofa
BRIEF
The 200th anniversary of the world’s first passenger railway journey – from Stockton to Darlington – in September 2025 was a moment of national pride with celebrations across the country. But with multiple stakeholders in the rail industry all competing for share of voice for their particular celebratory events, our campaign to maximise broadcast coverage for LNER’s event needed a different approach.
In the early hours of Sunday 28th September 2025, LNER marked the bi-centenary with a highly visual event: the replica of the first ever passenger steam train – Locomotion No.1 – pulling into Darlington station alongside its modern-day electric counterpart, the newly-branded LNER Azuma ‘Darlington’, symbolising the past meeting the future of rail.
STRATEGY
Despite the strong visual and historical appeal of the event, we knew – given the timing and the location – that broadcasters would be unable to send crews and reporters to cover it so we took our crew, editor and equipment to Darlington to bring the news to them. We provided a live feed of the trains’ arrival to the 24-hour rolling news channels and video agencies, quickly followed with B-roll featuring additional visual highlights of the celebrations and soundbites with key spokespeople. To further enhance broadcast interest, railway historian Tim Dunne and LNER Managing Director David Horne made themselves available for interviews through the night and into the morning
RESULTS
Tim conducted a live interview on BBC Radio 5 Live, (simultaneously airing on all 43 regional BBC stations) within minutes of the historical arrival. He also recorded his own commentary of the arrival for a package on Radio 4 Today before jumping in a taxi with David Horne for a trans-Pennine taxi dash to BBC Breakfast’s Salford studios for a sofa appearance. Subsequent interviews were also conducted with GB News, several local radio stations and then with APTN who combined their interview with our B-Roll and distributed the footage to over 500 TV stations worldwide.
