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Community Rail News – 16 October 2024

Hello everyone. It was great to see so many community rail partnerships and rail partners at the Community Rail Conference last week; we hope you all found it as inspiring and thought-provoking as we did. We were thrilled with how the Open Platform section went, and thank everyone who led and participated in the hugely constructive discussions. We will be carefully going through all our notes and picking up on your ideas and insights. You can download the conference presentations here.

Hopefully you will have seen this week we launched our tourism and leisure promotional campaign, Days Out by Rail. The campaign is being hosted on our Scenic Rail Britain website, recently updated with new functionality and a fresh look. Running until 3 November, you still have time to share your work online and link in with the campaign. Find a toolkit here or contact Alice for advice specific to your area.

Well done to all members who submitted entries for our Community Rail Awards. The shortlist will be announced on 11 December. Visit our Awards webpage to book your place or table at the event on 11 March 2025 and to explore the exciting fringe activities on offer.

Our Small Grants Fund for England is now closed to accredited community rail partnerships, as we are asking them to redirect their applications to the Community Rail Development Fund. The Small Grants Fund continues to be open to our community station, non-accredited community rail partnership and station adoption/small group members. Find all funding information here and please contact grants@communityrail.org.uk with any questions.

We’re sad to be saying goodbye to Rob Hattersley, who will be leaving us at the end of November. We’re sure you’ll join us in wishing him the very best for the future. We are already advertising the post here. In other team news, we are currently recruiting a community rail support officer to bolster our support of CRPs and station groups in the Midlands and East of England. this post is being advertised here.

Dementia Adventure, a charity providing supported activities for people living with dementia and their carers, is keen to develop local partnerships with community rail and expand beyond using minibuses, by developing rail confidence. If your CRP or station group might be interested in running a simple pilot, such as a day trip, please express your interest via Ian.

Our annual members’ survey will open this week, after a slight delay. We warmly encourage all members to respond, which should take no more than 15-20 minutes. If you’ve not received a link by the end of this Friday (18 October), or have any queries, please contact Rob L.

Send your stories to news@communityrail.org.uk and see our guidance on submitting stories.

Your next bulletin is on 30 October. Keep up-to-date in between on Facebook, InstagramLinkedIn, TikTok and X.

Best wishes,
Jeremy and Jools




Barrow in Bloom is delighted to have won Gold at the East Midlands in Bloom Awards, as well as achieving a fantastic 96/100 points as the Category Winner for Small Towns. Each group also received a Judges Award, which for Barrow in Bloom was in recognition of their amazing work transforming the station into a welcoming place, complete with vibrant planters and artwork.
The newly elected MP for Derbyshire North East, Louise Jones, recently visited Dronfield Station to hear about the work of the volunteer group there.

Lousie Jones MP said: “It was a pleasure to visit Dronfield Station and meet the volunteers who give their time to maintain the station and make it a welcoming gateway to the town. Thanks to the Friends of Dronfield Station, Dronfield now has regular train services to Sheffield, Chesterfield and beyond, and I was interested to hear that the volunteers have developed close ties with the schools in Dronfield and the surrounding villages. I very much look forward to keeping in touch with them in the future.”