Community Rail Week - members toolkit
Community Rail Week, sponsored by Rail Delivery Group, returns for its 5th year from 19 to 25 May 2025 and we’re encouraging everyone to get involved! This year’s theme is Railway 200, linking in with the national campaign to showcase community rail projects and initiatives that celebrate the past, present and future legacy of our railway. Find out more and see examples of member activities from last year here.
The campaign week can be a great opportunity to shine a spotlight on the vital work you deliver throughout the year, linking in with the four themes of Railway 200:
- Skills & Education
- Innovation, technology & environment
- Heritage, culture & tourism
- Celebrating railway people
To support you to do this, we’ve produced a range of digital tools and guidance to help amplify your local messages while linking in with our national campaign messages.
For further support, get in touch with our Comms team here.
Building up a picture of success
Plan ahead
Community Rail Week and Railway 200 are great opportunities to get involved in campaigns that have a national profile.
When planning your Community Rail Week activities think ahead to what you want to achieve and what the difference is that you want to make (outcomes). You may have outcomes in mind for the people you are engaging with e.g. 30 children increased their knowledge of how to plan and make a train journey or they may be for your group or CRP e.g. we have increased our knowledge of how commuters/leisure travellers view our line.
How are we going to evidence success?
Once you have your aims in mind think about ways that you can capture evidence (numbers, feedback, quotes, pictures) that will indicate success. Get in contact with your local support and development team contact to talk through ideas and opportunities.
Challenge
Can you extend your activity to incorporate something a bit different into your activities this year to help increase engagement and evidence success?
If you are running a trip could you incorporate a quiz or show of hands at the beginning ‘how many people know how to…?’ and then again at the end. For example: ‘we ran a trip for 20 people. By the end of the trip we recorded a 30% increase in knowledge on how to…’
If you are running a stall or an event at a station, consider including a small interactive exercise that people could do easily e.g answer a simple question or statement by putting a token in a box (blue for yes, red for no).
When engaging with people on the stall you could use the opportunity to ask one consistent question that all those staffing the stall will try to use if they can. For example ‘we talked to 200 people during the day and 25% of those further engaged to help us answer a question/provide feedback’.
Monitoring activity and collecting evidence of success
We encourage you to use our Impact reporting tool to record your Community Rail Week outputs and collect data and information to help demonstrate the success of your activities. If you don’t currently have access to the Impact tool or would like advice on how to use the tool effectively, get in touch with our training team
To measure your social media results, we look at the ‘reach’ of individual posts in addition to the engagement, which includes comments, likes and shares and provide a total of these. You can get this information either from each post or using the ‘Insights’ section of your social media profile.
At the end of Community Rail Week we will send out an anonymous feedback form where we will ask for the impact and results from your activities. This will help us to build a better picture of the impact of the nationwide campaign and will help us to benchmark for future years.
Social media
Example posts for sharing on social media (editable)
Template social media graphic (editable)
Countdown – 1 day to go
Countdown – 2 days to go
Countdown graphic – 3 days to go
Graphics
We’re proud to support graphic
Access to opportunities graphic
Education and young people graphic
Inclusive & build confidence graphic
If you would like these graphics in a different format, get in touch with our comms team.
Press & media
Template press release to send to local media newsdesks
If you would like support on writing or advice on where to send your press release please get in touch with our comms team.
Poster
Community rail poster – ‘proud to be part of’
You could use these posters to promote your work and involvement in community rail at local community hubs such as libraries, sports centres, information hubs, council offices, community noticeboards, local attractions, bus stations, community centres etc.
Councillors and MPs
Template letter to invite to event & seek support
Find your local MP and contact details here
Logos
Community Rail Week & Railway 200 logo
Community Rail Week & Railway 200 logo with date
