Veterans will gather on the platform at Swansea railway station early on Armistice Day, Wednesday 11 November, before the city’s poppy wreaths leave for London on the 7.18am train.
It is the seventh year of Great Western Railway’s Remembrance operation, which carries hundreds of wreaths from stations across its network to the war memorial on Platform 1 at London Paddington.
The South Wales leg starts in Carmarthen at 6.13am, picking up wreaths at stations on the way to Swansea, GWR says.
On the platform, Rev Canon Justin Davies will lead a service with veterans, the Royal British Legion and staff from GWR, Transport for Wales and Network Rail before the train pulls out.
GWR says around 30 people came to the Swansea service last year, and it is expecting more this time.
9,909 Punjabi soldiers added to the war graves records
This year’s operation marks 110 years since the Battle of the Somme, and puts the spotlight on soldiers of the British Indian Army whose deaths went unrecorded for generations.
Research by the UK Punjab Heritage Association uncovered the names, and 9,909 servicemen have now been added to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s casualty database, the rail company says.
Around 1.4 million men from what is now India, Pakistan and Bangladesh served in the British Indian Army in the First World War. Of those identified in the research, roughly a quarter were Sikh, a quarter Hindu and around 40 per cent Muslim, according to GWR.
Harbakhsh Grewal of the association said the Punjab Registers had proved “vital in documenting those men”, with some 320,000 unearthed in total through its work.
Phill Flower, the Royal British Legion’s Poppy Appeal manager for South West Wales, said this year had “particular significance”, with veterans from associations across Swansea coming to remember family members and all those who never returned.
He added: “It is important that we continue to honour their legacy and ensure their stories are not forgotten.”
Gurkhas and Sikh soldiers on Platform 1 at Paddington
At Paddington, members of the King’s Gurkha Artillery Unit and the Defence Sikh Network will form a guard of honour for a Remembrance train in special livery, carrying the names of 2,545 GWR workers killed in the First World War.
A two-minute silence follows at 11am. War Horse author Michael Morpurgo and Tan Dhesi MP are among those expected, GWR says.
Kay Davies, the company’s customer services and events manager, said station staff were always keen to help. “It’s a hugely poignant occasion and a real privilege to play a part in helping communities come together to remember those who served and sacrificed,” she said.
Poppies to Paddington began during the November 2020 lockdown. In 2023, a lone piper led Swansea’s dignitaries along the platform to hand their wreaths to the train manager.
Free trains and the Cenotaph silence
Veterans and serving forces with the right ID can travel free on Transport for Wales trains on Armistice Day. The Poppy train itself is a GWR service.
In Swansea city centre, the council’s Swansea Remembers event is in Paxton Street at 10.30am, with the silence at the Cenotaph at 11am. Every Remembrance date in the city is here.
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