Uniting the Rail Industry: How Charitable Freight Charters are Transforming Lives and Raising £300k for Martin House Children’s Hospice

Since 2019, a group of railway staff, led by myself and Mark Bridel from Network Rail, and Kev Adlam of GB Railfreight and the voluntary Branch Line Society, have worked together and with partners including David Jenkinson and Ross Taylor from DB Cargo and many others across the Freight community, to deliver a series of passenger charter trains to various unusual locations, including many freight installations, hauled by unusual freight company locomotives. To date the series of trains, which started as a one off to Drax Power station and Stocksbridge in memory of the son of a member of my staff in the Network Rail Control at York, have raised around £300k for Martin House Children’s Hospice in Yorkshire – an unfunded and unique place with many of the UK’s most specialist paediatric practitioners in its number, and who this year, in their 37th year are looking at a major revamp to future proof and update the facility and are looking to support a capital appeal by raising another £2M from its charitable supporters – of whom the charter team are a large part.

The trains have been run using charter train rolling stock and in most cases with huge FOC support, even those where the train operator was bespoke charter outfit such as Rail Adventure or West Coast Railways. The trains make money for the charity by a combination of visiting unusual locations, either rarely or never visited by a passenger train before, examples include Hitachi at Merchant Park, AV Dawsons, Sunderland Dock, Crewe IEMD and many more, and being hauled by FOC locomotives ranging from Class 20 and 37 through to Class 70 and 66’s. This has made them commercially viable not only to run but also to allow a profit to be handed directly to the charity where it makes a real difference – for example one train which raised £35k was able to fund a specialist paediatric specialist for a year! We supplement the ticket sales with on board raffles, money can’t buy super raffles where prizes including things like FOC Simulator experiences, Authorised Cab Rides and behind the scenes visits. There is also always a real ale on board bar and between all activities, once we have paid the commercial hire rates, the entirety of the project then becomes a single total for the charity donation.

The trains are unique too, in that unlike most charities, we see members of their own fundraising team regularly on board – quite a challenge for them being Yorkshire-based in some parts of the UK we have visited, which sees them working alongside various rail industry volunteers to and the Branch Line Society Volunteers to run the on board services, with Network Rail actively supporting our volunteers to help us deliver the product. The support of the industry and very much the freight community has seen us working as one team, and one industry and we remain indebted to all those who have not only come on board to support us, but have very heavily invested in what we are doing. So whether its DB Cargo, Freightliner, DRS, GBRf, Hanson and Hall, GB Railfreight, DCRail, Loram as our FOC’s and suppliers, or the likes of Drax, Cappagh, Lackenby, Cemex, PD Ports and many more who have allowed us access to their infrastructure and terminals, we truly are one industry working together to make a difference.

The future – what is next? What more can the industry do to continue this support to a place where they do remarkable things? Well we are grateful and certainly never expect the levels of support we get, so access and sensible pricing to deliver the most money we can as we try and achieve the £500k mark – train operation, locomotives and traincrew, access to third-party sites and the ability to support the use of heritage traction is important too. Super raffle prizes that money cannot buy, the most example was a DC Rail arranged behind the scenes visit to UKRL. And of course, we asbolutely thrive on the joint working that these trains have engendered.

By Jerry Dickinson, Senior Incident Controller – York ICC
Eastern Region
York Rail Operating Centre, York Engineers Triangle

Martin House Childrens Hospice, Charter train organising team