122 t269,000 lb
The Hogwarts Express engine, 5972 Olton Hall, weighs about 122 tonnes (269,000 lb) with its tender. The locomotive alone is about 76 tonnes; the rest is the tender full of coal and water. That is just the engine at the front: add the four or five carriages from the films and the whole train is closer to 300 tonnes.
| Engine, tender and five carriagesEstimate: the later films’ train, at 33 to 37 t per Mark 1 coach | 300 t661,000 lb |
|---|---|
| Engine, tender and four carriagesEstimate: the train as first filmed | 264 t582,000 lb |
| Engine and tender, full of coal and waterGWR figures: 121 long tons 14 cwt, which is 123.6 t | 122 t269,000 lb |
| Engine and tender, no coal or water in the tenderEstimate: minus 18 t of water and 6 t of coal | 99 t218,000 lb |
The engine in all eight films is a real one: 5972 Olton Hall, a Great Western Railway “Hall” class locomotive built at Swindon in April 1937. For filming it was painted crimson and given nameplates reading Hogwarts Castle, but it kept its GWR number.
The Hall class figures, as listed on Wikipedia, give the locomotive 75 long tons (76.2 t) and its tender 46 long tons 14 cwt (47.4 t). Together that is 121 tons 14 cwt in the old British long tons, so about 122 tons, or 123.6 tonnes in metric. We use 122 tonnes, which is the British figure rounded and about 1% under the metric one.
Those are weights in working order. The tender of a Hall carries 4,000 gallons of water (about 18 tonnes) and 6 tons of coal, so a tender with nothing in it is roughly half as heavy. Take both out and engine plus tender drop to about 99 tonnes.
In the films Olton Hall pulls four carriages, later five, all British Rail Mark 1 coaches from the 1950s and early 1960s. Nobody has published the weight of the film train itself, but Mark 1 corridor coaches like these weigh about 33 to 37 tonnes each.
Four of them add roughly 140 tonnes, giving a train of about 264 tonnes. With five it comes to about 175 tonnes of coaches and 300 tonnes in all, more than twice the engine on its own.
Olton Hall was withdrawn by British Railways at the end of 1963 and sold to Woodham Brothers’ scrapyard at Barry in 1964, where it sat until it was rescued. It ran again in 1998, two years before the production team found it at a preservation centre in Lancashire. Its owner, West Coast Railways, leases it to Warner Bros., and since March 2015 it has stood on its own tracks at Platform 9¾ at the Warner Bros. Studio Tour London, near Watford. The Studio Tour’s launch press put the engine at 75 tonnes.
The train you can ride in Scotland is a different one. West Coast Railways runs The Jacobite from Fort William to Mallaig over the Glenfinnan Viaduct seen in the films, usually behind an LMS “Black Five” or the K1 Lord of the Isles. A Black Five is a little heavier than the Hall: 73 to 76 tonnes for the engine and about 55 tonnes for its tender.
The engine and tender come to about 269,000 lb, or 272,600 lb using the exact GWR figures. With four or five carriages behind them, the whole train is roughly 580,000 to 660,000 lb.
Yes. The engine is 5972 Olton Hall, a real 1937 Great Western Railway steam locomotive, renamed Hogwarts Castle for the films and pulling real British Rail Mark 1 carriages.
The film engine has been on static display at the Warner Bros. Studio Tour London since 2015. The Jacobite in Scotland runs over the same Glenfinnan Viaduct, but with different engines.
Four in the early films and five later on, all British Rail Mark 1 coaches. Each weighs around 33 to 37 tonnes.
About 75 long tons, or 76.2 tonnes. The 47-tonne tender behind it holds the coal and water.
Last checked October 3, 2026.
