It was an early start today as I travelled from Morpeth to London with the winning team from Hirst Park Middle School, to meet our MP Ian Lavery and present their winning entry for SENRUG’s Schools Competition to make a DVD setting out the business case for re-opening the Ashington, Blyth & Tyne line to passengers. Mr Lavery, who strongly supports our re-opening campaign, was extremely impressed with the DVD describing it as “excellent”. Mr Lavery’s office had also arranged for the team to be taken on a tour round parts of parliament before meeting him. On the way back, we visited Northern Rail’s Operations Centre at York, and got a glimpse as to how complex running the modern rail network of today is. Northern Rail had also arranged for a special message to be displayed on the CIS Screens at Morpeth Station for the day congratulating Hirst Park Middle School on winning the competition.
Organising this competition has been hard work for SENRUG but we believe it has fulfilled our twin objectives of marking the 50th anniversary of the closure of the passenger rail service to Ashington in a way that focuses everyone on thinking about the re-opening; whilst simultaneously engaging a whole new generation of young people with rail campaigning. We estimate around 60 students across 5 schools in the region participated.
Thanks again to the competition sponsors and supporters: The Arch Group, News Post Leader, BBC, East Coast Trains, Northern Rail and CrossCountry Trains. Particular thanks to all the students who participated, and all the teachers and parent volunteers in the different schools for getting on board with us.
