What a great week it was!
Dedicated to promoting the exciting and diverse career opportunities of the rail industry and inspiring a new generation of young people in rail, Rail Week 2018 (8-14 October) has been the most exciting celebration of rail yet. Since its conception in 2016, Rail Week has brought the rail industry in all its guises closer to schools, teachers, career advisors and young people through a series of events, visits and talks.
Momentum began early in the year with industry leaders including Rail Delivery Group, Network Rail, the National College of High Speed Rail, HS2 Ltd, Freightliner Group and many more coming together and delivering several initiatives in support of the Government’s 2018: Year of Engineering Campaign. The campaign included social media campaigns promoting apprenticeships and women engineers in rail; the Summer of Engineering Activity book for children distributed across major railway stations in the summer; leading up to Rail Week – the dedicated week of activities ran by organisations and companies across the industry, coordinated by Young Rail Professionals (YRP) volunteers.
On behalf of YRP, Michael Charteris, Young Rail Professional (YRP) 2018-2019 Chair and Scheme Project Manager at Network Rail, would like to thank all those who were involved in delivering a fantastic Rail Week 2018. Michael continues: “Rail Week allows us to come together as an industry to promote the range of exciting and interesting careers and opportunities rail offers. By doing so we are helping inspire the next generation to join rail and be part of its future success.”
Rail Week this year saw the return of the RTS Leeds Depot Open Day, involving up to 80 school students; a mock car crash at the rail accident demonstrations and a series of talks from industry experts at Newcastle College Rail Academy’s Industry Week; mock assessment days by Knorr Bremse Services; and the closing event of the week – Siemens Kings Heath Traincare Facility and National Training Academy for Rail Open Day on Saturday 13 October which attracted over 1100 members of the public!
Other events during Rail Week included; an employer and educators engagement event hosted by LNER and several behind the scenes tours at major LNER stations; school group visits and week-long activities at Rail Delivery Group; a tour of Stratford Market Depot hosted by CPC Project Services LLP and London Underground, tours of the Swindon Integrated Control Centre and Bristol Temple Mead station on the Western Route; driver simulator days at GTR and LNER; and many other presentations and talks on career opportunities across the country. Several school visits also took place during the week where YRP ambassadors brought hands-on activities into classrooms. The response from industry and schools were overwhelming.
May-Ann Lew, Rail Week project lead, Young Rail Professionals and Senior Consultant at SNC-Lavalin Atkins: “Rail Week is our opportunity to engage with young people from all backgrounds across the country, to break down barriers and change the image of the industry. It is essential that the industry come together to attract the young people we need to deliver the industry plans for the future. It was great to see more and more collaborations were formed among rail companies and between the industry and the education sector through Rail Week.”
Photos from all Rail Week events are now available in our gallery and the official video will be available soon!
To get involved next year and support Rail Week please contact hello@railweek.com
Support Rail Week and YRP’s outreach activities @intorail on social media!
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