Settle Carlisle Railway Development Company will join community groups and volunteers across Britain for this year’s Community Rail Week, celebrating how our historic railways connect communities and are helping us move towards a greener, healthier, fairer future.
Community Rail Week, organised by Community Rail Network and sponsored by Rail Delivery Group, runs from 22-28 May, and looks to drive change at a community level through the efforts of 76 community rail partnerships and 1,200 station friends groups across Britain.
Settle-Carlisle Railway Development Company, along with Community Rail Lancashire, will be bringing a year 5 school group from Bradford, up the Settle-Carlisle line to Ribblehead Station, to spend a morning learning all about the viaduct and taking part in STEM activities, including building their own viaduct. The day aims to bring inner city children out into the Yorkshire Dales to experience the unique countryside.
Over fifty empowering community events and engaging activities are taking place throughout Community Rail Week nationwide – from Edinburgh to Cornwall – aiming to improve travel confidence, increase access to opportunity, tackle social isolation, give communities a voice, and put railways and stations at the heart of community life. They will also encourage people who rarely use public transport to consider the benefits of making at least the occasional switch to greener, healthier, more social forms of travel, including rail.
Throughout the year, The Settle-Carlisle Railway Development Company works on a number of community-based projects to enhance rail use, and to provide social value to the communities the line runs through. Projects include working with local dementia groups and Dementia Forward to create bespoke trips for those living with dementia and their families and a STEM education room promoting engineering and safety.
Chris Leech MBE General Manager said:
As one of the oldest CRPs, here on the S&C we believe that the prosperity of businesses and society are intrinsically linked, one cannot succeed without the other. We are proud to be a not-for-profit with a record of encouraging a customer-centric culture, which actively inspires social value impacting far beyond our operational route.
In 1869 the construction of the line began with the sole aim to provide a social purpose. Fast-track to today, enabled by Northern, we generate in excess of £10.5m per year of socio/economic benefits to the communities we serve, demonstrating that its businesses related to transport that have the power to affect significant positive change.
Jools Townsend, chief executive of Community Rail Network, said:
Community rail partnerships and thousands of ‘station friends’ volunteers the length and breadth of Britain are this week mobilising en masse, engaging local people and partners to raise awareness about rail travel, and get people enthused about its benefits. It’s all about connecting communities and bringing people together, while supporting and enabling more people to travel sustainably by train and access the opportunities they want. Community rail has an inspiring track record of doing just that: promoting travel confidence and broadening mobility horizons, sometimes with life-changing effects, while giving communities a voice on transport, and putting railways and stations at the heart of community life.
