Community Rail Week for 2023 has a theme of “Connecting Communities By Rail”.
An invitation to attend the Faversham Festival of Transport offered an opportunity to bring Kent Community Rail Partnership to a new audience.
The Faversham Transport Festival saw the usual Saturday market supplemented by vintage bus rides around the town and out into the surrounding countryside, an added attraction to bring in more visitors. On Sunday the town centre hosted a vintage and classic car show.
We were there for both days, in the prime location of the historic Guildhall alongside Railfuture and the Faversham Model Railway Club.
It was a very busy two days.
Bags, pens, stickers, badges, colouring in pages and puzzle sheets flew off the shelves; spreading our branding around the town.
There were lots of conversations about finding “Doorstep Discoveries” on a “Go Green By Train Adventure” with cycle maps of Sheppey and brochures for the island’s attractions proving popular.
There were so many conversations about Railcards that Dominic kindly made a visit to Faversham station to pick up some more brochures. Families were informed of the “Kids for a Quid” scheme, “GroupSave” and other offers that can make “Days Out By Rail” more affordable. Linda made sure that everybody who came along got to know about Southeastern’s new Hop on Board podcasts and how to “Go Green By Train”.
Amidst all of this were discussions about our project work and the impact it has on our communities. We shared stories from our Annual Report of our award winning work and the volunteers behind it.
The knowledge of our volunteers, the team from Railfuture and a little help from google enabled us to answer many queries relating to train travel today and future plans for the railway in Kent.
A huge thank you to all our volunteers for making it such a fabulous event. Over 1600 people came through the doors over the weekend.
We’re proud to be sharing how we are “Connecting Communities By Rail” as we celebrate “Community Rail Week”.
