Acorp
Station Adoption Seminar

Merseytravel HO, Liverpool.

Several members of Strathleven Artizans had the honour of attending the first ever station Adoption Seminar which took place in the city of Liverpool, this event was organised and run by Hazel Bonner events organiser for Acorp ( Association of Community Rail Partnerships).
With free rail travel and overnight accommadation provided we set off from Renton station and made our way to Glasgow central for the 12.54 train for Manchester airport changing at Preston for Liverpool.
We met and travelled down to Liverpool in the good company of John Yellowlees
External Relations Manager for First Scotrail
who kept us on the right track and delivered us safely to our distination which was the Lord Nelson hotel right next to Lime St station.
We were met on arrival at the hotel and made most welcome by Hazel Bonner from Acorp, we booked into our rooms had a quick freshen up before we all met up again outside the hotel when we all made our way in several taxi's to Liverpool's Albert Dock where we were treated to some Acorp hospitality at the The Beatle's story, we had the place to ourselves and we were given a grand tour throughout the museum learning all about the history of the Fab 4, we had a fabulous buffet in the Cavern and a few glasses of wine too !!! we spent a couple of hours looking round the Beatles Story talking to and getting to know some of the other delegates who were attending the Seminar with us, we all got called together and waiting for us outside was an open top bus to give and take us on a tour round Liverpool which was great, thank goodness it was dry and not raining as several of us had no jackets on, the tour round the Pool flew by and once we got dropped off in the centre of Liverpool we all headed off to try some of Liverpool's famous pubs and after a few pints were sunk it was time to head back to our hotel and some well deserved kip.
Thursday 21st July.
After breakfast we headed off to Merseytravel HQ for the Seminar were delegates from all the UK had gathered for the day's event.
After registration, tea and coffee it was down to business with Hazel thanking everyone for attending and introducing the guest speakers.
First off was Neil Buxton Acorp General Manager talking about station adoption and "The Big Society", followed by Mike Franklin of Network rail, we then had Sue Miles of Acorp give a entertaining and interesting speech, Acorp Brian Barnsley gave a talk on Insurance and other legalities, the morning was rounded off by our own John Yellowlees who spoke about the train operators view on station adoption in Scotland.
The morning flew in and it was now time for lunch.
After a short break the afternoon session got off to a fine start when first up was Strathleven Artizans who made an appearence from a side room in full medieval gear to the total amazement of the 50 odd delegates who had assembled, they had no idea that we were going to come in all dressed up but we got a great reception from all present.
We had Stout Duncan (Duncan Thomson), Edward Bruce (Jim Tannock) and Bishop Wishart (David Murdoch).
Duncan told the delegates about Renton station and how we came to adopt it from the previous tenents etc and how we turned it into the King Robert the Bruce Heritage Centre and that we were amazed and delighted to win Station of the year in 2010 and that we are all volunteers etc.
After our 25 minute speech we retired to get changed and rejoined the talk soon after,
the speaker on this occastion was Nigel Winchester from Maghull Station adoption group.
Around 2.15pm we had a break-out session when we were all dIvided into 3 groups and we talked through various things to do with station adoptions and what we can do to improve things and find out about each ones stations etc, this was an interesting way to end the day.
The seminar was now complete and this only left the visit to the nearby Mughull station but unfortunatly we were unable to attend as the train times back to Glasgow were a bit tight etc.
We said our goodbyes and thanked Hazel and the acorp team for their wonderful hospitality and looking after us so well.
It was time to head back to Lime Street Station and head back home to Renton from Liverpool changing at Preston for Glasgow, we said farewell to John Yellowlees at Preston as he was catching the Edinburgh train.
A big thanks goes to Acorp for inviting us, John Yellowlees, Scot rail and Trans Pennine rail for Rail passes, Merseytravel for hospitality and all the many delegates we met and spoke too.
A special thanks to David Murdoch for standing in for KRB as Paul was ill and unable to attend Thanks Bro.
Also Thanks goes to Tommy Crocket for putting together our power point presentation Thanks Tommy on a job well done !!.
Our logistics and transport specialist (Jim Tannock) recieves no thanks from Duncan & David for having us walk so many extra miles in the wrong direction in Liverpool. Hence his new knickname TOM TOM.

Report by
Jim Tannock
Strathleven Artizans.