A variety of organisations are coming together on today to help North Staffordshire Community Rail Partnership and East Midlands Trains roll out a number of improvements to Alsager station.
The event is the next in a series of very successful ‘Station Community Days’ held at stations on the North Staffordshire Line (Crewe-Derby route), when the aim is to involve a number of agencies to improve the whole environment of the station for passengers.
The station’s ‘Friends’ group, a band of hard-working and dedicated station adoption volunteers, all from the local community, who have been transforming the station’s extensive platform gardens, will be working side-by-side with staff from station train operator East Midlands Trains on gardening, weeding, litter picking and painting improvement projects.
British Transport Police Constables and Police Community Support Officers, lead by PC Paul Williams, are also coming along to lend a helping hand in the activities.
Support already received from local schoolchildren will be at the centre of the activities; in recent weeks, students from Alsager High School have been working hard designing and creating colourful poster artwork for the station, and the Partnership will be unveiling this on the day for installation in the passenger waiting shelters.
Plus, Alsager musician and composer Barnaby Smith will be playing folk music to inspire the workers and entertain passengers using the station.
Faye Lambert, Project Officer for the Partnership, said: “Community Days are a great way of adding extra value to the brilliant work done by station volunteers to improve and help maintain their local stations.”
Jason Cocker from East Midlands Trains added: “This is a great example of how local communities can pull together to make some real improvements. We’ve had great success with our Community Days and are looking forward to working with all the volunteers at Alsager to deliver further improvements to Alsager station.”
In addition to the improvements planned on the Community Day, Alsager station has recently benefited from a fresh new coat of paint, new platform seating, CCTV (match-funded by Partnership member Cheshire East Council), cycle storage facilities and new platform signage as part of East Midlands Trains’ wider station enhancement scheme.
