Celebrating Tonbridge Station's 183rd Birthday
Our stall had promotional materials for our projects and activites, tote bags, pens and other freebies to help us engage with passengers as they passed through the station.
Alongside us for the morning where a team of tutors and students from the Oaks Specialist College, Southeast CRP’s Tonbridge station adopters. They were selling the student’s craft work and plants grown at the college, showcasing the skills of their students.
Sharon Gray, Community Rail Officer for Southeast CRP showed us a series of vinyl graphics the CRP commissioned for the overbridge, depicting scenes from the station’s past to mark Railway 200.
Later in the day Sharon gave a tour of the station planters and murals to Community Rail Network’s Jenni Jones and Sam Agnew.
Over the course of the day we spoke with many people about Community Rail, their local train services and things to do along our lines on Days Out By Rail, sharing our Medway Valley Rail Trails and details of the Spa Valley Railway.
One memorable discussion was with a couple returning from their holidays, travelling by train from Gatwick to Broadstairs, “We always use the train to get to Gatwick. We never get stuck on the M25 and Advance tickets were only £25 each.”
Another passenger wanted to remind us of the value neuro-divergent travellers place on printed timetables and service information. Worries that electronic displays at stations may not be working can put some people off of making rail journeys.
We were delighted that Kent County Councillors for Tonbridge, Mark Hood and Paul Stepto found time to visit.
You can’t celebrate a station birthday without cake and towards the end of our day Southeastern brought out a spread of cakes and bakes to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support.
A huge thank you to the Southeastern team at Tonbridge for hosting us, to Dominic Noades for volunteering at our stall and to everyone who stopped to find out more about Community Rail.
