Its always lovely to be able to say thank you to everyone who comes to visit us – and especially at this time of year where we are beginning a new season and are open to the public again.  We have just had the most marvelous Easter and if you were one of our visitors – thank you so much for taking the time to come and see us and make it our most successful Easter opening ever.  All the money we make from the operation goes into helping to build our railway – so we now have extra pennies in the bank to allow us to keep growing.  We also had a lovely comment from one gentleman who visited our stand at a recent exhibition – he said how pleasurable it was to be met in the car park and for someone to check if you had been before, let you know when the train was due to depart and what was available.  Also how friendly and helpful everyone was.  Well we like talking to our visitors and making sure you go away with a happy warm feeling – so we must be doing something right!

We are now ramping up to our next bank holiday event which is our annual celebrations of our love of soft toys.  Our Teddies Go Free week, which begins on Thursday 27th April and continues on the Sunday and Bank Holiday Monday, encourages youngsters to bring their favourite toy or teddy along for a free ride on the train and to get a free teddy bear rosette.  We hope to see some of you at this week as well.  The volunteers are raiding their homes for their own teddy’s annual outing – so a lot of cuddling of toys will be taking place.

Back at the sharp end of the railway operation – Truthall Halt is now looking really superb.  We have the platform in place – we still need to do a bit more with the surface – but trains are stopping there.  The platform facing is completed,  the reproduction lamp standards are installed as is the fencing and signs.  The track is almost finished – and we are waiting for our first set of buffer stops to arrive.  The pagoda is coming together, all in all we have a very beautiful new/reinstated station in the making.  And a very happy group of Truthall Halt working volunteers.

Finally we are now registered with Volunteer Cornwall which also helps us with our group of young volunteers.  The Juniors are now an established part of our volunteer group and in addition have their own special day each month at the railway working on their own projects.  If you know someone who would like to get involved just contact Paul on paul@helstonrailway.co.uk.