All Together Now is an award winning and innovative Community Rail Lancashire project that engaged with college students, primary school children and disadvantaged adults to rejuvenate the rural village railway station at Pleasington.
All Together Now is a community based project focusing on enhancing the waiting environment at Pleasington station, a small rural station on the East Lancashire line 3 miles west of Blackburn town centre.
Located on the Blackpool South to Colne line, and a request only stop, the station is served Monday to Saturdays by an hourly diesel service (two hourly on Sundays) serving Preston and Blackpool South to the west and Blackburn, Burnley Central and Colne to the east.
Pleasington station was in need of some TLC to help restore local pride and create a more suitable gateway to the area. It had a rather underwhelming station environment with old and dirty barrel roofed shelters on each platform, overgrown vegetation, broken fencing and limited seating.
Having secured £2000 from the Abellio Best Practice Challenge in 2015 to support diversity and equality outcomes within a community project, Community Rail Lancashire, Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council and local artist Alastair Nicholson set about eliciting support from a variety of groups and organisations with a mix of ages and abilities to form a strong partnership between the railway and the local community that would transform the station environment.
To read the full report and best practice paper click the link here – All Together Now, Pleasington Station.
A new leaflet has been designed that showcases the work carried out as part of the All Together Now project at Pleasington and this can be downloaded by clicking this link: All Together Now.