Community Rail Lancashire recently launched its brand new educational website Down the Line.
The new Down the Line website focuses on creating an innovative and unique living record of local stations. The records will be created through working with thousands of local school children, ensuring a record of each relevant station exists, which represents, and has been created by, the community.
Each station will be represented by a map icon, where teachers can input station project information following their work with CRL. In chronological order, different schools’ projects will appear within each station section, highlighting the excellent work that each child undertook when learning about the national and local railway.
In addition to this community record, projects undertaken by CRL will be displayed on the site. Each school will also have their own page, to serve as a record for schools that have taken part and to enable them to link the site to their own school website.
Students from colleges and universities will also be encouraged to apply for volunteering roles through the site, where recent updates and photos will be posted via a news feed and Twitter to encourage a high uptake of volunteers.
CRL’s ‘Education Network’ will also be featured on this site, within the map page. Different CRPs will be able to highlight and feature their own station projects and education work; allowing them to showcase their work alongside other outstanding examples from other CRPs.
The website also allows registered users access to a toolkit that has been designed to encourage schools, CRPs and user groups to develop their own educational programmes using the experience and best practice of the Community Rail Lancashire education team.