200 Stories of Railway Pride

progress-pride-rainbow-flag-symbol-of-lgbt-community-illustration-vector
progress-pride-rainbow-flag-symbol-of-lgbt-community-illustration-vector

Click here to enter: https://trained.website/200-stories-of-railway-pride/

Following on from the success of award-winning ‘100 Women, 100 Journeys’ and ‘100 More Women, 100 More Journeys’, Community Rail Lancashire is once again looking for railway anecdotes from staff and passengers but this time with a focus on the LGBTQ+ community and allies.

As 2025 celebrates 200 years of the modern railway, this time we are looking for 200 stories to feature in the booklet which will be handed out at various Pride celebrations, school engagement and station events. We’re really keen for the booklet to inspire both members who are part of the LGBTQ+ community and those who don’t identify as members to look at careers in rail as well as gain confidence to travel on the rail network.

We’d love stories from
*Rail staff who do a variety of roles on the railway – the more unknown the better! (What does your job entail, why do you love it? How did you come to do it?)

*Stories from staff who feel they can bring their whole self to work. Did you come out at work? Go through transition? Do you have positive stories to share?

*Members of staff who’ve been involved with the creating of ‘Trainbow’ liveries or organisation of pride events or setting up networks to support staff from the LGBTQ+ community.

*Stories from passengers who’ve travelled to pride events, larger cities to feel a closer part to the LGBTQ+ community, or a favourite rail journey – in the UK or abroad. Have you met your partner on a train? Or made a friend?

*Allies of the LGBTQ+ community – friends, parents, children about memories of travelling by train or working on working on the railway

*The not-so positive stories from passengers and staff – we don’t want to paint a picture that all is completely rosy – we know it isn’t and we want to hear your story too! Are there times you’ve felt alone, sad or worried? What do you think the industry needs to do to change this?

Important Information:

Deadline – 31st March 2025 at 11:59pm

Stories can be shared with your name or anonymously if you prefer. You can either send a photo of yourself or a picture that represents your story. All entries used in the final booklet will receive a goody bag (each year we have used every story sent to us and monitored amount of entries to ensure this has happened but if we have more than 200 we will have to select stories to be printed – the remainder of stories will be published online).

Click here to enter your story https://trained.website/200-stories-of-railway-pride/

To read the previous two anthologies please click here:

100 women 100 Journeys (fliphtml5.com)

100 more women, 100 more journeys (fliphtml5.com)

If you have any questions about the project, please reach out to project manager Karen Bennett at

karen.bennett@communityraillancashire.co.uk

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