Railway Family Week 2024 Round Up

This year, we held our fourth annual Railway Family Week. The aim of the week was to bring together the entire rail industry to fundraise and raise awareness of the Railway Benefit Fund (RBF). Your support has been fantastic; from taking part in our raffle to teams across the industry participating in our Station to Station Challenge, and even volunteering and sharing our social media posts.

However, we still have a ways to go to meet our fundraising target. Please help us raise much-needed funds so that we can continue to be there for the Railway Family when they need us.

Our Station to Station Challenge

This year, we launched our 2,000-mile virtual walking challenge. Teams from Amaro, Clemtech, Cross Country Trains, Engauged, Freightliner, Furrer + Frey, Porterbrook, RIA, RSSB, Railpen, and VTG Rail came together to help us cover the length of the UK, calling at 23 key stations while raising money.

In total, our teams have walked 11,920 miles, taking over 26 million steps and raising over £5,000 for the Railway Benefit Fund. We would like to thank our fantastic teams for supporting us and for taking on our station-to-station challenge.

Raffles

This year we had three incredible raffle prizes available. Our fantastic Hornby bundle, consisted of 5 different items, kindly donated by Hornby. We also raffled an amazing Desktop Departure Board, kindly donated by UK Departure Board. Our final prize was 4 tickets to the new Steps Musical – ‘Here and Now’ – kindly donated by Pete Waterman. Our amazing raffle has raised over £900.

Thank you to everyone who has supported us during Railway Family Week. Over the past five years, the number of applications we have received has more than tripled, and this year has been our busiest yet. We are grateful for the support and understanding of our community during this difficult time. In addition, we have noticed a shift in the demographic of our beneficiaries, with a majority of applications coming from individuals under the age of 50. This highlights the growing need for our services and we are committed to helping those in need in the rail industry.

Thank you again for your support, and we look forward to continuing to make a positive impact in the lives of current, former and retired railway workers and their families.