Holders of the new "weekend tickets" for the seventh Tenterden Folk Festival will be entitled to free travel on Kent and East Sussex Railway's steam trains on the Saturday and Sunday of the festival in October.

Weekend ticket holders will still be able to enjoy all the usual festival events including folk clubs, concerts, a barn dance, West Gallery music, sing-a-rounds, sessions, dance displays, Morris dancers, Appalachian dancers, the grand procession, street theatre, story telling, workshops, craft fair, etc. and also have a ride on one of the railway's historic steam trains. Festival guests and Morris dancers will also be taking the opportunity to travel on the trains over the weekend so it should be a highly colourful and musical train journey.

On Sunday Kent and East Sussex Railway will be running two special "folk trains" with guests from the festival to entertain passengers with a variety of folks songs and music. The musicians will include Vic and Tina Smith, Bob Kenward and Ray Styles. Passengers will need a weekend ticket or a standard train ticket. Vic and Tina are well known on the Sussex folk scene through their involvement with local folk clubs, the Sussex Folk Diary and, of course, as members of the Sussex Pistols ceilidh band who have played at the festival in the past. Bob is, perhaps, best known for his prolific writing of songs and poems about Kent which have been taken up by many local singers. He is also a member of SkynFlynt who have been regular guests at the festival since it first started in 1993. No doubt Bob will have written a song about the Tenterden railway for the occasion! Ray is a regular singer at many folk clubs on the Kent and Sussex borders and is renowned for his rendition of "the bears song".

Twenty-five years ago, dedicated enthusiasts re-opened the Kent and East Sussex Railway - the epitome of England's classic rural railways. Today, the line is still run largely by volunteers and has become one of the area's favourite tourist attractions. There are engines and carriages dating from Victorian times to the 1960s waiting to take you for a nostalgic trip through seven miles of beautiful countryside between the historic Kentish market town of Tenterden and the pleasant village of Northiam in East Sussex.

Use your weekend festival ticket or buy your train ticket at one of the restored country stations, then savour the characteristic sights and sounds of steam engines working hard on the steep gradients of the world's first full-size light railway. It was engineered and managed by the enigmatic railway entrepreneur, Colonel Holman F Stephens, and has a unique heritage and delightful atmosphere. That charm and ambience live on, enabling you to experience rural rail travel and folk songs and music from an era when the pace of life was less hurried.

Tenterden Folk Festival - Tourist Information Centre, 18 The Church Yard, Ashford, Kent, TN23 1QG, Tel. 01233 629165

Kent and East Sussex Railway - Tel 01580 765155