THIS IS a great month on the railway's calendar.

Firstly we have the Autumn Steam Spectacular from October 7 to 9, for which we will be welcoming two visiting steam locomotives.

It's the first time in several years that we've been able to arrange road access for the visitors because of various restrictions placed on the bridges in the area, so it will be something special to see the two visitors hauling trains on the branch.

The event also sees demonstration freight trains running and gives passengers a chance to travel in some very special carriages.

As well as running steam trains throughout half-term (October 24 to 28) we have the Beer and Music Festival, from October 20 to 23. The Beer and Music Festival sees us transforming Keighley and Oxenhope stations to accommodate over one hundred ales and many speciality ciders for you to sample, accompanied by a wide range of live music.

Once we get into November, we will be supporting the Haworth Steampunk weekend (November 19 and 20) before turning our attention to Santa and his Pixies.

We run Santa Specials on the weekends before Christmas from November 27 and also December 23 and 24. The Santa Specials are always popular, and some dates have very limited availability so please book soon via the website to avoid disappointment.

As well as the event planning, we continue to run steam trains every weekend and the heritage diesel service runs on Wednesdays.

In amongst, we do shut the railway to allow essential maintenance work to be undertaken, some of which can't happen when we are running trains.

This year's Civil Week focused on Oakworth, with a team of very dedicated volunteers devoting a week's holiday to replacing the timbers and track work at the level crossing. It necessitated closing the road for a few days whilst they effected the repair, but I'm sure you will agree that the disruption was worth it now that the new road surface is in place.

Once the series of October events is passed we will have more time to finish off the Oakworth work, including the necessary realignment of some of the platform edging that will mean we can remove the temporary 'mind the gap' signs we have had to install in the meantime.

If you would like to join the volunteer team, whether to help the 'permanent way' gang maintaining the track and other infrastructure, work on the stations or get involved with operations, as well as a whole variety of other roles, please do get in touch.

We have a number of opportunities, so if you can spare some time to support the railway, we'd be very keen to hear from you.

Our Mince Pie Specials well again run from Boxing Day to January 1 along the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway line.

Passengers can travel in our toasty Yuletide carriages and see our stunning stations transformed with an amazing Christmas display, real coal fires and gas lights.