In this article, a new weighted and compact conservative difference scheme for the symmetric regularized long wave (SRLW) equations is considered. The new scheme is decoupled and linearized in practical computation, that is, at each time step only two tridiagonal systems of linear algebraic equations need to be solved. It is proved by the discrete energy method that the compact scheme is uniquely solvable, the convergence and stability of the difference scheme are obtained, and its numerical convergence order is
O
(
normalτ
2
+
h
4
)
in the
L
∞
‐norm. Numerical experiment results show that the scheme is efficient and reliable.