Blog

Burnley-Manchester direct service: the countdown begins

The countdown to the launch of the first direct rail service between Burnley and Manchester in over 40 years has begun.

[divider type=”default” vspace=”20px” hspace=”0%” /]

For 17th May, passengers will be able to depart from Burnley Manchester Road station, transformed as part of the Citizens’ Rail project, and reach Manchester Victoria in just 52 minutes.

The service is made possible by the reinstatement of 500 metres of rail track known as the Todmorden Curve. This is the result of a multi-million pound investment and almost a decade of partnership work between Burnley Council, Network Rail, Lancashire County Council and Northern Rail.

Advanced marketing of the new service has now started, with 90,000 flyers (shown below) distributed to households in the area, and the launch of a dedicated webpage. This will be followed by an extensive marketing campaign, coupled with a celebration morning at Burnley Manchester Road station on the first day of the new service.

2015/03/30
Transnational masterclass in Preston

Students from Germany, the Netherlands and the UK took part in a two-day Citizens’ Rail masterclass in Preston this week to generate new ways to promote rail travel.

[divider type=”default” vspace=”20px” hspace=”0%” /]

Hosted by the University of Central Lancashire’s Institute of Transport and Tourism, the event included site visits to Burnley and Blackpool, expert speakers from Marketing Lancashire, Abellio, Lancashire County Council, Burnley Borough Council and Blackpool Borough Council, and workshop sessions where the students worked in transnational groups.

The students were from four institutions: UCLAN and Plymouth University in the UK, RWTH Aachen University in Germany and Zuyd Hogeschool in the Netherlands.

Presentations by the students:
The students generated marketing campaigns aimed at different groups including commuters, families and tourists. They presented their results to an audience of rail and marketing practitioners:

Photos from the masterclass:

Visiting Burnley Manchester Road’s new station building with Richard Watts, Lancashire County Council

Children from Padiham Green Primary School pose for the students next to their artwork in the station’s community room

Hard at work at Victoria Mill in Burnley

Exploring Blackpool’s tourist appeal as the sun sets

Abellio’s Jeremy Whitaker advises the students on rail marketing

What happens next?

Our partner organisations within the Citizens’ Rail project are keen to bring the students’ insight and marketing ideas to life. We will be discussing which of the concepts we can put into practice during the spring and summer, prior to the project’s final conference in Torquay, UK, on 1st October 2015.

Keep in touch with the latest from Citizens’ Rail – sign up for our quarterly enewsletter.

2015/03/24
Conference presentation on developing railway websites

Citizens’ Rail’s Communications Officer Mike Parker-Bray delivered a presentation on “Developing a Community Rail website” at the 2015 First Great Western community rail conference.

[divider type=”default” vspace=”20px” hspace=”0%” /]
Train operator First Great Western plays a major role in Citizens’ Rail’s Riviera Line project, and holds the event each year to bring together all those involved with, or who have an interest in, the various Community Rail lines and activities across the region. This year’s conference on 19th March was held in Bristol, European Green Capital 2015.

The website presentation was prompted by interest in Citizens’ Rail’s award-winning TheRivieraLine.com website, pictured above.

[power_title color=”#404040″ ]Slides from the presentation[/power_title]

You can read more about these topics thanks to a list of additional resources compiled to support the talk.

2015/03/20
Partner meeting in London

Our latest partner meeting took place in London last week – and included some excellent opportunities to learn from the Department for Transport, the East Japan Railway Company, and Crossrail.

[divider type=”default” vspace=”20px” hspace=”0%” /]

We were extremely grateful that Clare Moriarty, Director General for the Rail Executive, and Norihito Kuroyanagi of the East Japan Railway Company (JR-East) joined our meeting at the Department for Transport on Thursday 5th March 2015.

Clare was particularly interested in Citizens’ Rail’s work with schools, praising how our partners are balancing safety messages with making local and regional railways welcoming and engaging.

Norihito gave an excellent presentation on how JR-East involve communities in Japan. This ranged from children’s projects to innovative shops at urban stations that sell rural produce and encourage passengers to visit outlying areas by train.

In the afternoon, we were invited to train operator First Great Western’s headquarters in Swindon, where we heard updates from each of our partners and collaborated on next steps. We then held a photocall to celebrate the launch of the Citizens’ Rail train livery (see photos).

The following day we received a tour and series of interesting presentations from Crossrail – the new high frequency, high capacity railway for London and the South East. Our tour included a rooftop view of works to transform Whitechapel, during which we heard how Crossrail is working with the community to minimise disruption and keep people informed.

Meeting at First Great Western headquarters, Swindon

Our partners pose with the Citizens’ Rail train – see more photos

Discussing the work at Whitechapel, with the City of London in the background

The challenge at Whitechapel is to undertake major infrastructure work in a busy and heavily built-up area

2015/03/10
All aboard the Citizens’ Rail train

The Citizens’ Rail project is now being promoted across the South West of England thanks to a new train livery unveiled last week.

[divider type=”default” vspace=”20px” hspace=”0%” /]

Train operator First Great Western – heavily involved in our Riviera Line project – kindly offered to rebrand the Class 153 train to coincide with our latest partner meeting. On Thursday 5th March, our French, German, Dutch and UK partners travelled to Swindon for a meeting at First Great Western headquarters, and then saw their unmissable red train arrive at the station. The “photo bubbles” on the train show the different types of community engagement undertaken during the project, ranging from our family Minibeast Trail, to transnational student masterclasses, to work with volunteers.

The unit (number 153325) will now travel the First Great Western network spreading the word about the project. It’s already been spotted at stations including Totnes and Dawlish (see final photo below), where it was described as “rather stunning” by one commentator, Colin J. Marsden, editor of the Dawlish Trains website.

A second train livery, promoting travelling to South Devon by train, is also currently in production. The units were in need of rebranding as they were in London Midland rather than First Great Western colours. See more photos:

© Colin J. Marsden, DawlishTrains.com. Click image to see large version (5MB).

Video at Torre station by William Spencer. (15 seconds into the video, you can see Torre’s new shelter, constructed as part of the Citizens’ Rail project.)

2015/03/09
All aboard the Citizens’ Rail train

The Citizens’ Rail project is now being promoted across the South West of England thanks to a new train livery unveiled last week.

[divider type=”default” vspace=”20px” hspace=”0%” /]

Train operator First Great Western – heavily involved in our Riviera Line project – kindly offered to rebrand the Class 153 train to coincide with our latest partner meeting. On Thursday 5th March, our French, German, Dutch and UK partners travelled to Swindon for a meeting at First Great Western headquarters, and then saw their unmissable red train arrive at the station. The “photo bubbles” on the train show the different types of community engagement undertaken during the project, ranging from our family Minibeast Trail, to transnational student masterclasses, to work with volunteers.

The unit (number 153325) will now travel the First Great Western network spreading the word about the project. It’s already been spotted at stations including Totnes and Dawlish (see final photo below), where it was described as “rather stunning” by one commentator, Colin J. Marsden, editor of the Dawlish Trains website.

A second train livery, promoting travelling to South Devon by train, is also currently in production. The units were in need of rebranding as they were in London Midland rather than First Great Western colours. See more photos:

© Colin J. Marsden, DawlishTrains.com. Click image to see large version (5MB).

Video at Torre station by William Spencer. (15 seconds into the video, you can see Torre’s new shelter, constructed as part of the Citizens’ Rail project.)

2015/03/09
All aboard the Citizens’ Rail train

The Citizens’ Rail project is now being promoted across the South West of England thanks to a new train livery unveiled last week.

[divider type=”default” vspace=”20px” hspace=”0%” /]

Train operator First Great Western – heavily involved in our Riviera Line project – kindly offered to rebrand the Class 153 train to coincide with our latest partner meeting. On Thursday 5th March, our French, German, Dutch and UK partners travelled to Swindon for a meeting at First Great Western headquarters, and then saw their unmissable red train arrive at the station. The “photo bubbles” on the train show the different types of community engagement undertaken during the project, ranging from our family Minibeast Trail, to transnational student masterclasses, to work with volunteers.

The unit (number 153325) will now travel the First Great Western network spreading the word about the project. It’s already been spotted at stations including Totnes and Dawlish (see final photo below), where it was described as “rather stunning” by one commentator, Colin J. Marsden, editor of the Dawlish Trains website.

A second train livery, promoting travelling to South Devon by train, is also currently in production. The units were in need of rebranding as they were in London Midland rather than First Great Western colours. See more photos:

© Colin J. Marsden, DawlishTrains.com. Click image to see large version (5MB).

Video at Torre station by William Spencer. (15 seconds into the video, you can see Torre’s new shelter, constructed as part of the Citizens’ Rail project.)

2015/03/09
Our work-in-progress “toolkit”

We’ve been working hard behind-the-scenes on our upcoming Citizens’ Rail toolkit, which is now rapidly taking shape. Here’s an update…

[divider type=”default” vspace=”20px” hspace=”0%” /]

Set to be launched this summer, the toolkit will be an online guide to inspire more people in the UK and abroad about community rail, and to give them the advice and knowledge to make things happen.

It will be full of examples, photos and videos of great projects. This will range from the French station that is now home to a thriving creche, to the award-winning “passport” scheme run by Community Rail Lancashire to engage local schools with their railway. All of this will be organised under four main themes:

• Creating better stations
• Bringing lines to life
• Getting people involved
• Evaluating your success

The finished mini-website will be aimed at audiences including the rail industry, local, regional and national government, other public sector organisations and of course CRPs and volunteers.

We realise that appealing to all of these groups is a tough challenge. However we’ve received some excellent feedback about how to make the toolkit useful, attractive and effective.

Last autumn we ran workshop sessions about it at ACoRP’s North and South seminars and at the Devon & Cornwall Rail Partnership conference. Along with regular discussions with our UK, French, Dutch and German partners, the workshops generated some extremely helpful ideas about what the toolkit needs to look like, prioritise and include. A helping hand also comes from all the resources already out there, like ACoRP’s Station Adoption guide. We won’t try to duplicate or compete with these – instead we will highlight and link to them.

Once we have a working draft of the toolkit (something we’re beavering away at as we speak), then we hope to share it with members of our target audiences in order to “road test” it. Following any tweaks, we will then create French and German language versions to increase its potential audience on the continent.

Even after it has been launched, we hope that the toolkit will continue to grow, thanks to contributions from the community rail sector and others. Readers will be able to share their own advice and experience by adding comments and suggesting new case studies to be featured. In this way we are aiming for the toolkit to provide a long-lasting legacy for the Citizens’ Rail project, which comes to a close this autumn.

To hear more about the toolkit and to be notified about its launch later in the year, sign up to receive the quarterly Citizens’ Rail e-newsletter.

2015/03/02
Citizens’ Rail to present at European mobility conference

Citizens’ Rail’s academic team will be presenting at the European Conference on Mobility Management (ECOMM 2015) in May.

[divider type=”default” vspace=”20px” hspace=”0%” /]

In a positive example of transnational working, Nick Davies and Richard Weston (University of Central Lancashire, UK) and Dominik Elsmann and Marco Trienes (RWTH Aachen University, Germany) have prepared a paper on “Understanding Citizens’ Rail: how marketing and social outreach can encourage involvement by the public in their rail services and change attitudes towards rail”.

This has now been accepted as part of the “Understanding the user” presentation session at the conference, to be held in Utrecht in the Netherlands from 20th to 22nd May 2015.

Visit the conference website to find out more.

2015/02/18
Citizens’ Rail to present at European mobility conference

Citizens’ Rail’s academic team will be presenting at the European Conference on Mobility Management (ECOMM 2015) in May.

[divider type=”default” vspace=”20px” hspace=”0%” /]

In a positive example of transnational working, Nick Davies and Richard Weston (University of Central Lancashire, UK) and Dominik Elsmann and Marco Trienes (RWTH Aachen University, Germany) have prepared a paper on “Understanding Citizens’ Rail: how marketing and social outreach can encourage involvement by the public in their rail services and change attitudes towards rail”.

This has now been accepted as part of the “Understanding the user” presentation session at the conference, to be held in Utrecht in the Netherlands from 20th to 22nd May 2015.

Visit the conference website to find out more.

2015/02/18