Endeavour have adopted Darnall Station, an underused and under cared for local Sheffield Railway Station. With the support of Northern Rail this has provided the focus of social action activity for a number of learners. They have been involved in improving the local area, planting and the like. They have fed ideas in to planners around car parking, fares, usage and improvements to the local area.
The learners were supported to organise a community clean up in the vicinity of the station. Not only did they manage to involve numbers of the local community (some of whom didn’t even know they had a local station), with over 50 people turning out on a cold damp day, local councillors came to support, employees from Northern joined in - they also managed to collect a lorry sized quantity of rubbish. The local community gained a much more favourable image of our young people and the local church rewarded us with hot drinks and biscuits.
Learners were involved in making a film for Northern and the Passenger Transport Executive about station adoption groups. Ours is very unusual as it involves young people. Endeavour were also invited to deliver a key note presentation at the Community Rail Conference in Leeds. The film was unveiled as part of this conference.
Darnall Station is an interesting siding to our mainline activities which we hope to develop further in the coming year.
