[Title photo: © Jack Boskett Media Ltd.]
It was a huge night for our volunteers at the Heritage Railway Association’s annual awards ceremony on the evening of Saturday 8th February.
We were nominated in two categories, Team of the Year and Achievement of the Year, and we won both of them!
Gathered with the great and the good of heritage railways at the Hilton Gateshead in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, and surrounded by so many high quality entrants from railways all across the country, our group waited nervously as the nominations were read out, we could scarcely believe our luck when we won both categories that we were nominated in. What a result!
Team of the Year
The first award was for Team of the Year, for which John Noble, Kathryn Casement, David Crone, Ian Cross, Mike Beckett, and Robert Gardiner were nominated for the mountain of work they carried out as part of our recovery process following the devastating floods of Autumn 2023. This group have worked so hard in the past 12 months, from dealing with our drastically and urgently changed Christmas event with an unbelievable mountain of customer queries, ticket changes and refunds, to dealing with insurance underwriters and H&S officials, to cataloguing and sourcing replacements for damaged equipment, and leading the physical recovery work across the railway. Whilst most of their work has gone unseen, it is certainly not unappreciated.
Achievement of the Year
The second category we were nominated for was Achievement of the Year, for reopening the railway after last year’s devastation. This nomination belongs to all volunteers, from the old hands to the new faces, for everything they have done to get the railway back up and running over the last year. In this category we were joint winners with the Severn Valley Railway, for their hard work on their partnership with Network Rail.
The night’s compère, Paul Lewin, General Manager of Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland Railways and a good friend of Downpatrick even loaned us a pair of wellies for the night, as a nod to all the time we spent splashing around in floodwaters. Thanks Paul, that was appreciated!
After such a difficult, demoralising year at the railway, with so much hard work behind us, it has been really fantastic to be recognised by our heritage railway peers and friends across the UK and Ireland. A huge congratulations to all our volunteers, and well done also to all the nominees.
