Young Volunteers Training Week

This will take place between the 1st and 6th August 2021. 

The Festiniog and Welsh Highland Railways have staged “Kid’s Week” for many years; we have now renamed it “Young Volunteers Training Week”. It has always been regarded as a very important source of active volunteers, particularly as many of our older volunteers are now less able to give ” hands on” help. 

Both our railways would have difficulty in maintaining services particularly in the summer without our volunteers. The vast majority of our trains are crewed by volunteers, who, are also important in participating in the background activities all of which keep the trains running including working on the track, signalling, building repairs and keeping our stations looking neat and tidy. If you ask many of our volunteer staff how they started on the railway the answer will be “Kid’s Week”. All these activities are aimed to ensure that our passengers have an enjoyable and memorable time so much so that they will visit the railway again. 

Last year Covid prevented the “Young Volunteers Training Week” from taking place. This year we are making a really determined effort to organise and run a covid secure training week between 1st and 6th August. This time we will have thirty one young volunteers, and, with Covid well behind us we hope to organise a larger a bigger training period next year. The week has been carefully planned and organised by some of our senior staff so that everyone involved in the week will have experience of every aspect of the very varied FR/WHR activities. 

The week will start with a briefing for our young volunteers which will not only include information about the activities in which they will be involved but also about our application for a National Heritage Lottery Fund grant towards the £4 million interpretation and conservation project at Boston Lodge. Just like our training week, this project is pivotal to our future. The volunteers that we attract may well become deeply involved in this new project contributing to the future success of the Festiniog and Welsh Highland Railways. 

We are very optimistic about our future hopefully attracting an increased number of passengers and new volunteers to help us.