We were delighted that London Road Station’s underpass mosaic was nominated for a national Community Rail Award in the ‘working with young people’ category. As nobody from Albion in the Community could attend, I went along to the Association of Community Rail Partnerships (ACoRP) award ceremony in Torquay to represent London Road Station. The weather was glorious, and the train journey from Exeter to Torquay down the River Exe along the coast at Dawlish and then alongside the River Teigne has got to be one of the most beautiful in the country.

As things turned out, the mosaic project didn’t win an award, but other Southern stations did: Purley got second prize for its mural, Hassocks came second in the most enhanced station buildings category and Southern Railway got third prize for its ‘This is Me’ campaign highlighting passengers’ individual needs.

As part of the evening, we were given some very silly things to do such as standing up with hands on heads (heads) or hands on hips (tails), waiting to be eliminated as our master of ceremonies flipped a coin. Only … I wasn’t eliminated and much to my surprise, ended up on stage winning the game. The bottle of Bollinger was perfect for the next day’s LRSP Harvest Supper and the iPad mini is great for taking garden pictures and updating the blog. It was a lovely evening, spent in great company with others working to enhance stations and bring them back to being focal points in the community – lots of inspiring projects. You can read about the winning ones here.

Thanks to Vanessa Cumber and others for the photos.