Cheshire Best Kept Stations

John Hulme

Merseyrail to be 2018 main sponsors

Cheshire Best Kept Stations is pleased to announce that Merseyrail will be its main sponsor for its 2018 Awards Evening.

The Awards Evening will be held at the Grange Theatre, Hartford, Northwich on Tuesday 5th February 2019 to celebrate and recognise the work of station adoption and community groups in improving their local stations by gardening, arts projects and other community activities.

Last year’s event, the 15th to be held, attracted 160 guests including the mayors of every borough council in the former county of Cheshire and many rail industry representatives.

A charity raffle raised funds for The Samaritans and Railway Children.

Cheshire Best Kept Stations Chair Mark Barker said: “We are delighted that Merseyrail has chosen to support us as main sponsor.

“They have an outstanding track record of community engagement and understand the good work that station adoption and other community groups can do at local stations.

“Thanks to the sponsorship of Merseyrail and other companies, we will give those groups an enjoyable and inspiring evening that is free of charge to them.”

Andy Heath, Merseyrail’s Managing Director said: “This is a wonderful event which says thank you to all those people who work tirelessly to ensure their local, train stations remain at the heart of their communities.

“Whether that is through creating beautiful gardens, painting stunning murals, opening a book exchange or many, many more creative ideas. We are always amazed and humbled by the myriad of ways that people find to transform their stations.”

World War One Commemorations

Enjoy our slide show below of how the centenary of the end of WW1 was commemorated at Cheshire’s stations including:

Crewe Railway Station
Goostrey Railway Station
Handforth Railway Station
Hattersley Railway Station
Reddish South Railway Station
Romiley Railway Station

We look forward to presenting a special WW1 Commemoration Award at our 2018 Best Kept Station Awards Evening on Tuesday 5th February 2019.

Handforth Station Gets an International Twin

The twinning was marked this week by a handover of four station name boards, two in Irish and two in English. One of each is now displayed at Handforth station.

Following a visit to Handforth from John Reville, Passenger Service Manager, Irish Rail and Gerry Rafferty from Malahide, Mike Bishop, Chairman of Friends of Handforth Station, returned the visit and received a Malahide flag to fly at Handforth.

A Handforth flag depicting the Honford star and Handforth Hall will fly at Malahide Station.

Liam Sumpter, Central Regional Director for Northern and Jools Townsend, CEO of ACoRP were at the station to see the work that the Friends of Handforth Station had and continue to progress at the station since they, the first station Friends group in ACoRP were formed in 1996.

Liam Sumpter, Regional Director for Northern, said: “We’re really impressed with the excellent work carried out by Handforth Station in creating such valuable links with international stations. The group has continuously delivered excellent results for their community and Northern, and we are really proud to have the Malahide flag at Handforth station. I look forward to seeing what this outstanding group does next.”

Jools Townsend, chief executive, Association of Community Rail Partnerships, (ACoRP) says: “It’s wonderful to see such a long-running station friends group going from strength to strength – and now being twinned with Malahide Station in Ireland. We know from our work supporting hundreds of community rail groups across Britain how important these groups are to their communities. They not only make stations more welcoming, pleasant places, but also bring local people together, promote pride and understanding, and help more people to access sustainable travel by rail. The Friends of Handforth are exemplary in the fantastic range of work they carry out to engage the community. We look forward to continuing to work with them to share their good practice and ideas across the community rail network.”

Mike Bishop, founder of the Friends added “It is thanks to the continuing support of Northern, ACoRP, Irish Rail and all our Sponsors which enables us to make the station a unique welcoming gateway to the village.”

Andrew Backhouse, Chair of Friends of Handforth Station said “Twinning, we hope will bring some mutual exchanges of good ideas, occasional visits, and just a bit more ‘spice’ to life as friends of a station! Friends in Ireland now, where next for Handforth Station Friends?”

Speaking about other developments Andrew added “We can now say that there is progress on some other actions. Handforth will finally get its electronic display system this month and a half hourly service into the evening will start at last.

“These are some of the things we have campaigned about without much progress for a long time. Perhaps we will soon be able to tell everyone some progress on disabled access…..”

Sandbach Transport Festival

The Sandbach Transport Festival was a great example of collaboration between volunteers (Friends of Sandbach Station) and Arriva ‘s Northern and North West Bus operators.

Cheshire Best Kept Stations were pleased to attend and helped to give away lots of goodies and answer questions from the public.

We were pleased to meet up with the team from Arriva North West Buses including Toby Cooper, the Engineering Manager for Winsford / Macclesfield and Matt Mort, the Operations Manager for Winsford / Macclesfield also Ciara and Andrew who are students working their placement year with rail operator Northern.

Railway Children Donation

CBKS Chair Mark Barker presents Val Brignall of Railway Children with a cheque for £150

The funds were raised at the recent Cheshire Best Kept Stations 2017 Awards Evening.

Railway Children is a Sandbach based charity that works to help street children in India, Africa and the UK.

A similar donation was made to the Northwich branch of The Samaritans.

Mark said:

“We are delighted to be able to support these charities that do an amazing job as well as showcasing the work of volunteer groups at Cheshire ‘s stations.”