Grassroots rail movement continues to support Wales’s communities and strive for a greener transport future
Have you ever passed through your local rail station and stopped to admire a beautiful planter bursting with flowers, followed a station to station walk or seen an old station building restored to become a new hub for the community?
If you have, it’s probably thanks to community rail.
Across the rail network, community rail groups are actively making stations more attractive and welcoming, transforming disused station buildings for community use, and promoting sustainable and active travel projects.
Yet in the eyes of the public, their growth and impact are a lesser-known success story of communities and transport working together, delivering far-reaching social, economic, and environmental benefits. So, what exactly is it?
Community rail is about engaging local people at grassroots level to promote social inclusion, sustainable and healthy travel, wellbeing, economic development, and tourism. It involves working with train operators, local authorities, and other partners to bring improvements to rail services and stations, with improved accessibility and inclusion, and help communities to have a voice in rail and transport development.
It is evidenced that community rail contributes high levels of social, environmental, and economic value to local areas. It is estimated that volunteer activity alone is worth £33.2m annually, and passenger numbers have risen on community rail lines, while countless stations have been enhanced thanks to community efforts. Qualitative evidence also shows profound, life-changing implications for individuals and groups supported to start using rail to access new opportunities.
There are now more than 70 community rail partnerships across the United Kingdom, with six of these in Wales.
These community-based organisations work in partnership with the rail industry, other transport providers, local authorities, charities, and educators, delivering activities which aim to reduce inequality, take climate action, support inclusive economic development, and improve health and wellbeing.
In addition, there are over 140 station friends’ groups across Wales – volunteers who bring local people together with the station as a focal point, but whose work reaches well beyond station boundaries. Around 1,100 volunteers give more than 50,000 hours per year to community rail, putting local railways and stations at the heart of the communities they serve. Increasingly, stations are being ‘adopted’ not only by volunteers interested in the railway, but also by schools, colleges, support groups, charities, or enterprises, who see the benefits of working in a rail environment, and opportunities for making a tangible difference to their locality.
In Wales, community rail has flourished, creating many opportunities to provide social change for both individuals and communities. All groups use their knowledge and expertise to promote improvements that benefit local people, delivering powerful impacts on place-making, regeneration, sustainability, community engagement, and changing people’s lives for the better.
Commenting on the importance of the community rail movement in Wales, Jools Townsend, chief executive of Community Rail Network said: “Community rail works to make our railways as inclusive as possible, bringing people together and bolstering local pride and wellbeing. In Wales, community rail groups have adapted and responded, supporting communities through the pandemic, maintaining positivity, and continuing to help people get the most from their railways and stations.
“As our communities rebuild from Covid-19, within community rail, and across our railways, we will need to redouble efforts, with our partners, to create confidence and togetherness, and play our part in re-orientating ways of thinking and living to be more socially and environmentally responsible. Community rail is all about that: communities and connectedness, and people working together to make things better for each other and our shared future.”
The six community rail partnerships in Wales help to provide a voice for the local community, promote accessible and sustainable travel, bring communities together – supporting diversity and inclusion, and support social and economic development.
On the Heart of Wales Line, Llandovery station hosts an award-winning community-run café, and the station gardens are cared for by children from the local primary school. At Llanwrtyd Wells, the old station building at has been re-opened by Llanwrtyd Community Transport as a community activities and meeting space, and at Llanelli, the station friends group are planning a new station garden aiming to secure funding to redevelop the former goods shed as a community hub featuring arts, business support, a café, and an exhibition showcasing the industrial heritage of the area.
At Borth on the Cambrian Line, station adopters raised nearly £40,000 to fund the renovation of disused station buildings to convert them into a museum, which is now used as both an educational and social resource.
Based at Gobowen Station, Severn Dee Travel – a not-for-profit organisation run by volunteers and the Chester-Shrewsbury Community Rail Partnership – runs a station café that offers work experience opportunities to students with special educational needs from a local college. Working in a safe and supportive environment, students from Derwen College undertake a high-quality work experience placement where they learn basic catering and customer service skills. This directly links to their vocational studies and supports their longer-term career aspirations by providing an authentic opportunity to develop work-related skills.
Gardening projects can be found at stations across the country, including at Lamphey in Pembrokeshire, where the station is cared for by the local Women’s Institute. Biodiversity is also driving a major new project based at Treherbert Station, where a community growing scheme, led by the Welcome to Our Woods Partnership, is being developed alongside a new community rail partnership for the Valleys area.
Community Rail will also play a pivotal role in supporting local resilience efforts and helping our railways to be a vital component of a greener, more inclusive way forward as part of a ‘green recovery’ from Covid.
Last summer, this saw the Heart of Wales Line and South West Wales Connected community rail partnerships offering grants to help community groups continue through the pandemic or to drive positive change locally.
And in a bid to attract people back to rail post-Covid, all Welsh community rail partnerships are working together to promote tourism by rail and other forms of public transport throughout Wales, encouraging safe, sustainable, and scenic adventures through a new website which will offer information on where to find awesome adventure, fantastic food, gorgeous gardens, heroic heritage, and obtainable outdoors.
As Wales’s communities and railways seek to ‘build back better’ from the effects of the pandemic, community rail is set to play a pivotal role in supporting local resilience efforts and helping to position rail as a vital component of a greener, more inclusive way forward.
For more information on community rail and to find your groups near you, visit communityrail.org.uk.
