The railway has various systems in place to help support and recognise the work done by its volunteers, and this page describes the main ones.
Volunteer Liaison Officers
A driver (who is one of our VLOs) preparing a steam locomotive for operation.
Helping to keep you safe
To help volunteers to get established, and particularly to help them stay safe, we have a team of Volunteer Liaison Officers (VLOs), and also a Safeguarding Officer. If you have any queries about volunteering at the railway you are welcome to email them at
In particular, for each new volunteer one of these VLOs will run a short safety induction, to provide you with key information about working safely while acting as a volunteer.
Working Members Website
We have a separate website that is dedicated to providing working members (ie those who are volunteers) with interesting items of useful information. A username and password is needed to log in to this site, and if you are a volunteer then one of the VLOs will give you this information as part of the induction.
This link is to the working members’ website.
Training
A fireman deciding whether to put more coal on the locomotive fire.
Helping to develop your skills
For any volunteer role some training is likely to be needed, and in particular for any role involving either engineering or train operations then training is an essential part of being a volunteer. We have a well-established structure for this training, which is illustrated in the “progression routes” leaflet that can be downloaded from this link.
Long Service Awards
Members who had been presented with long service awards in March 2017, along with our Vice President, Don Townsley, who had made the presentations.
Recognising significant contributions
Since the railway has been operating for a long time we have a number of volunteers who have given service over many years, and to recognise this we have three levels of long service award. These are in the form of appropriately coloured lapel badges: Bronze to mark 20 years, Silver to mark 30 years, and Gold to mark 40 years.
More Information
If you want to know more about getting involved, other pages of our web site will provide more information about:
Also, for other topics other pages of our web site will provide more information about: