Donate & Support

Background

Sittingbourne’s Steam Railway receives no external funding and relies upon ticket revenue, the Railway Shop, Away Sales and the Footplate Café to provide enough cash to keep the Railway operational each year. This money also pays for the maintenance of the Railway and, particularly, Milton Regis Viaduct, which has cost over £150,000 since the 1990s on a rolling programme of maintenance.

Sittingbourne Viaduct

We are currently fundraising to buy the materials to replace the wooden sleeper-built platform at Sittingbourne Viaduct station with a purpose-built concrete platform that will be wider and higher to improve accessibility to the trains, as currently we cannot deploy a wheelchair ramp to get passengers on or off the train.

Let’s put the B(oiler) back in Superb

Locomotive-wise, we are currently raising funds to repair a boiler to go into Superb so that the locomotive can be operational in 2024, when Melior celebrates its 100th birthday but is also taken out of service for boiler repairs/replacement.

Donating money

To make a regular or one-off donation use our fundraising page at www.justgiving.com/sklr – if you are a UK taxpayer please also add Gift Aid as that will add even more to your donation!

We also have an Amazon Wishlist if you would like to buy individual items – from cat food for the Railway’s cats to paint and picnic tables!

If you are a business and would like to donate some money or resources, please contact info@sklr.net

Volunteering your time

It’s not just your money we’re after – it’s your body too!

The Railway’s band of active members needs bolstering to enable some of them to have time off, rather than being required to keep the Railway running, especially during August which has trains running 1-4pm every Wednesday and 11am-4pm every Sunday plus the bank holiday Monday – that’s a big ask of our volunteers. We can provide tools and training for operational and maintenance tasks.

We have people at Kemsley Down several days a week but to make things a little easier for new volunteers we have:

• Tuesdays – locomotive engineering
• Wednesdays – for maintenance of the track, gardens, carriages and wagons from about 10am-4pm
• Saturdays – various teams carry out work at Kemsley Down from 10am-4pm
• Sundays (and Wednesday’s in August) – during the operating season we need staff to operate the Railway as well as maintain it, you will often find the track gang busy at work on the line or at Kemsley Down – this can be quite hard work and a great workout!

On a typical operating day during the season, we need the following roles to be filled:

• Station Master, Sittingbourne Viaduct*
• Assistant Station Master, Sittingbourne Viaduct
• Booking Clerk, Sittingbourne Viaduct*
• Station Master, Kemsley Down*
• Assistant Station Master, Kemsley Down
• Fireman*
• Steam locomotive driver*
• Diesel locomotive driver*
• Locomotive cleaner (a trainee fireman role)
• Guard*
• Ticket Inspector
• Sales person in the Railway Shop
• 2-3 people in the Footplate Café

*must be over 18 years of age

So that’s 14-15 volunteers every operating day.

If you would like to offer your time for any of the roles listed above or have skills you think the Railway may benefit from, please email info@sklr.net and will find you something to do!

It must be noted that only members can be working volunteers, see this page for more information.