RailRiders

[AndrewE]

One thing I could never get was that members were encouraged to log their mileage, and there was a competition each year for the highest. The winners clocked something like 40k miles or more! Never understood how a kid could do that.

I guessed that the child was being taken by a parent with an all-line staff pass, so Management grade 5 (i.e. the top) or above? I don't think the vouchers were valid for unaccompanied children.

 

[Failed Unit]

I guessed that the child was being taken by a parent with an all-line staff pass, so Management grade 5 (i.e. the top) or above? I don't think the vouchers were valid for unaccompanied children.

They were. I used to use them to get from Market Rasen - Lincoln.

However never understood how some kids got such high mileage. I struggled to hit 1000.

 

[gazthomas]

I was a member for many years. As I recall the mailing address for the club was in Wetherby, West Yorks and I looked forward to getting the magazine. That discraced DJ often featured as I recall.

I also had the book mentioned in an earlier posting. In fact I still have it.

I used my vouchers on my own - for day trips and towards Coast and Peaks Rovers.

Incidentally, does anyone remember the “Ready, Teddy, Go” family railcard promotion of the same era?

And here is my photo of 47406 at Leeds circa 1987.

 

[Helvellyn]

And of course when 47406 was withdrawn the Rail Riders name was transferred to large logo 47488.

 

[AntoniC]

The jumper as knitted by a great aunt of mine.

Does the sweater still fit you ?

 

[ag51ruk]

It was £5, and you got £5 of vouchers (2 x £1, and the rest in 50p). I think the club was marketed to family railcard holders, with the £1 vouchers essentially meaning kids went free on family trips.

One thing I could never get was that members were encouraged to log their mileage, and there was a competition each year for the highest. The winners clocked something like 40k miles or more! Never understood how a kid could do that.

There was a separate category for staff travel holders - I remember entering one year and calculating that I has done something like that (child priv return was max £1 at the time once boxes all used up and I used to be out every weekend and every day during school holidays, plus a couple of family holidays by train to Italy). I did Derby- London more often than most commuters - I didn't make the top three though...

 

[AndrewE]

There was a separate category for staff travel holders - I remember entering one year and calculating that I has done something like that (child priv return was max £1 at the time once boxes all used up and I used to be out every weekend and every day during school holidays, plus a couple of family holidays by train to Italy). I did Derby- London more often than most commuters - I didn't make the top three though...

I think the club pre-dated boxes. I still have card free tickets made out to "Mr & Mrs X and 2 children" and we wouldn't have needed the rail riders vouchers if staff children went for a pound when were paying.

 

[bspahh]

One thing I could never get was that members were encouraged to log their mileage, and there was a competition each year for the highest. The winners clocked something like 40k miles or more! Never understood how a kid could do that.

The record was 125k miles (!) according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_Riders

The club ran an annual mileage competition. In 1989, this competition was won by Jonathan Carter, who set a world record of 125,386 miles (201,789 km) travelled by train in one year.

 

[Cowley]

The record was 125k miles (!) according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_Riders

Blimey that’s impressive. That’s an average of over 340 miles a day!

 

[quarella]

Does the sweater still fit you ?

Sadly it appears to have shrunk

 

[AntoniC]

Sadly it appears to have shrunk

 

[AY1975]

Well I wasn't a member of Rail Riders because I had privs. Otherwise I probably would have been. And living in York 47406 was quite possibly the most boring loco on the network, along with any other GD based 47/4.

That didn't matter: as someone else mentions in this thread, there was a separate category of membership, which I think was known as the Railway Children category, for children of railway staff.

 

[AY1975]

I was a member for almost the entire period of the club's existence, and during that time I managed to persuade a few of my friends to join including my cousin.

It was open to children aged 5-16, and I think it started in about 1979. It was initially called the Great Rail Club, and I joined in 1980 when I was 5. About a year after I joined it was renamed Rail Riders, possibly to coincide with the launch of BR's "This is the Age of the Train" advertising campaign featuring that disgraced DJ from Leeds (and little did we imagine what he got up to behind closed doors back then!).

I used to really like the "Rail Riders Express" club magazine, which you used to get about three times a year, usually once in the spring, once in the summer and once just before Christmas. In its early days you used to get a free gift with each issue, and it used to have a pen pals page where you could get in touch with other club members. I grew up in Putney, south-west London, and I had a pen pal who lived near Willesden Junction. I went to visit him a few times, taking the train from Putney to Richmond and then a Class 501 EMU on the North London Line to Willesden Junction. I think I first contacted him in 1983 or '84, and last saw him when my dad and I went with him to Reading to see the GWR 150th anniversary exhibition train in 1985.

In the late 1980s they brought out a new club logo, and redesigned the "Rail Riders Express" magazine. It got smaller but came out more often. Personally I preferred it in its original format.

Looking back on it now, I would guess that the club was aimed not necessarily specifically at enthusiasts, but generally at children who liked travelling by train, although it may have encouraged an interest in railways among those members who weren't already enthusiasts. Without wishing to sound sexist, railways have always been regarded as a largely male-dominated hobby, but Rail Riders seemed to have a good mix of members of both sexes.

Soon after I turned 16 in 1991 and reached the upper age limit, I learned that the club was closing down, presumably in anticipation of rail privatisation. A great pity, but I suppose it was a sign of the times.

 

[AY1975]

I guessed that the child was being taken by a parent with an all-line staff pass, so Management grade 5 (i.e. the top) or above? I don't think the vouchers were valid for unaccompanied children.

Yes, or else they might have travelled thousands of miles across Europe, or further afield such as Canada, the USA or Australia. You were allowed to include trips on foreign railways as part of your total mileage - only journeys to and from school (and presumably school trips by train) were excluded.

My dad used to speculate, half-jokingly, that the winners of the annual mileage competition might be children of divorced parents with one of them living in Penzance and the other in Wick or Thurso, and that they lived with one parent and travelled to visit the other one every weekend! That would be a very long and complicated journey for an unaccompanied child, although I think I myself could have coped with such a journey from my early teens onwards!

 

[AY1975]

And here is my photo of 47406 at Leeds circa 1987.
View attachment 44626

It appears to be hauling a train of Provincial-liveried stock, which would suggest that it was on a Liverpool-Newcastle "Trans-Pennine" branded service. The replacement "Rail Riders" loco, 47488, was a regular on this route when it carried the name "Rail Riders". 47406 used to get all over the country, though.

 

[gazthomas]

It appears to be hauling a train of Provincial-liveried stock, which would suggest that it was on a Liverpool-Newcastle "Trans-Pennine" branded service. The replacement "Rail Riders" loco, 47488, was a regular on this route when it carried the name "Rail Riders". 47406 used to get all over the country, though.

Yes, it was on Newcastle to Liverpool duty

 

[theblackwatch]

It appears to be hauling a train of Provincial-liveried stock, which would suggest that it was on a Liverpool-Newcastle "Trans-Pennine" branded service. The replacement "Rail Riders" loco, 47488, was a regular on this route when it carried the name "Rail Riders". 47406 used to get all over the country, though.

More like a Newcastle-Liverpool working given that it's on platform 12 at Leeds!

 

[theblackwatch]

One of my schoolfriend's mum worked for Rail Riders (they lived in Wetherby). I remember going to one of their events at the Railwayman's Institute at York, at which there was the chance to meet Chris Hughes (who had won Mastermind on TV with the subject British Steam Locomotives, 1900–63).

This webpage might bring back a few memories for some. I suspect Issue 11 is one you won't find on display anywhere due to its front cover!

 

[Bald Rick]

One of my schoolfriend's mum worked for Rail Riders (they lived in Wetherby). I remember going to one of their events at the Railwayman's Institute at York, at which there was the chance to meet Chris Hughes (who had won Mastermind on TV with the subject British Steam Locomotives, 1900–63).

This webpage might bring back a few memories for some. I suspect Issue 11 is one you won't find on display anywhere due to its front cover!

I forsee another trip up into the Bald Rick archives tomorrow.

That webpage is excellent. I was also a member of the Commodore sealink club, and never stepped on a Sealink ferry!

 

[Helvellyn]

Does any remember the model railway and shop at York station...? I think that was linked to Rail Riders.

 

[AY1975]

Does any remember the model railway and shop at York station...? I think that was linked to Rail Riders.

Yes, it was called Rail Riders World. I seem to remember that one of the model layouts was of a power station, maybe based on Drax, and the train would arrive loaded with coal and leave empty or vice versa which I thought was very clever.

I think the former Rail Riders World premises have now been turned into the York Tap pub, next to the short stay car park adjacent to Platforms 2 and 4.

 

[AY1975]

One of my schoolfriend's mum worked for Rail Riders (they lived in Wetherby).

Was she the club secretary, by any chance? I seem to recall that the secretary in the early days was called Caroline, then Angela (Angela Hopkins if I remember rightly) replaced her, and I think it was Lynne for the last few years.

 

[AY1975]

Membership (£5?) gave 10 travel vouchers, I think, plus discounted entry into various tourist things. Obviously a bribe to get accompanying adults to buy tickets for journeys they wouldn't otherwise have made. My boys were members because at the time children's priv fares were 25% of half the full ordinary single or return fare - usually a lot more than 50p. It saved us quite a bit of money.

There were loads of visitor attractions all over the country where Rail Riders got free or discounted entry if they showed their membership card. Those places were called Sticker Stations, because they gave you a little round sticker to show that you'd been there. Some of them were railway or other transport-related attractions, and some of them other types of attractions like zoos, theme parks and living museums. For example, I seem to recall that Edinburgh Zoo, Beamish North of England Open Air Museum and the Black Country Living Museum were Sticker Stations.

With the late 1980s redesign of the club logo and magazine, they started giving you a "Passport to Adventure" to put your stickers or stamps in, as the Sticker Stations then changed to giving you a stamp instead of a sticker.

 

[theblackwatch]

No she wasn't one of the ones named in Rail Riders Express, although rather embarrassingly I can't remember her first name!

 

[xotGD]

One of my schoolfriend's mum worked for Rail Riders (they lived in Wetherby). I remember going to one of their events at the Railwayman's Institute at York, at which there was the chance to meet Chris Hughes (who had won Mastermind on TV with the subject British Steam Locomotives, 1900–63).

This webpage might bring back a few memories for some. I suspect Issue 11 is one you won't find on display anywhere due to its front cover!

Some impressive flailing on the cover of Issue 10!

 

[pdeaves]

My copies of the magazine always arrived after the competitions had closed. I wrote in on the issue and the reply I had promised that in future there would be no closing date on competitions. To this day I don't see how that would work!

 

[acned]

Slight thread drift but in London so far this year there have been a number of youth murders, some gang related. One of the reasons given is "there is nothing for kids to do". London's kids get free travel, if I had had that perk in the 80s I would have never been at home! Transport isn't a 'cool' topic for kids today, but it was in the 50s and 60s. A new club themed like Rail Riders could try and get kids (not just those in London) into stuff like bus and train spotting. How can our interest in transport be made 'cool'?

At Crewe Works open day in June 1984, my rose-tinted recollection was that every other person seemed to have a Rail Riders bag, I sadly didn't!

 

[AY1975]

If you stayed in the Rail Riders club until you turned 16, which was the upper age limit, they used to send you a voucher to get your first 16-25 Railcard (or Young Persons Railcard as they were called in those days) for half price. They sent me one, and I duly made use of it.

 

[86206]

The vouchers & badges....Can remember having a silver/black one with APT on it.

 

[theblackwatch]

There was a chap on the Rail Express/Pathfinder Class 50 charity trip today wearing a Rail Riders badge!