Community rail

Community rail in Britain is the support of railway lines and stations by local organisations, usually through community rail partnerships (CRPs) comprising railway operators, local councils, and other community organisations, and rail user groups (RUGs). Community railways are managed to fit local circumstances recognising the need to increase revenue, reduce costs, increase community involvement and support social and economic development.

The Association of Community Rail Partnerships (ACoRP) supports its fifty or so member CRPs and also offers assistance to voluntary station friends groups that support their local stations through the station adoption scheme. Since 2005 the Department for Transport has formally designated a number of railway lines as community rail schemes in order to recognise the need for different, more appropriate standards than are applied to main line railway routes, and therefore make them more cost effective.

The Association of Community Rail Partnerships is funded by the Department for Transport as an umbrella group to support CRPs and station friends groups. The association shares ideas and best practice among its members through various channels including conferences and seminars and a quarterly magazine Train Times, also a monthly electronic newsletter. An annual Community Rail Awards event is held each autumn on a different community railway around the country each year.

There are more than fifty CRPs, most supporting just one line but some, such as the Devon and Cornwall Rail Partnership, encompass several nearby routes.

The Department for Transport announced a pilot project in 2005 under their Community Rail Development Strategy, with the intention of having seven differing lines (Abbey Line, Esk Valley Line, Looe Valley Line, Penistone Line, Poacher Line, St Ives Bay Line, and Tamar Valley Line) test out different types of community rail schemes. The aims of these schemes are to:

Designation does not physically separate a line from the rest of the network or remove it from either Network Rail or franchise operation. It is not generally intended to be used as a mechanism to reopen lines or create "microfranchises", although these options may be investigated on some routes.

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