Announcing Decoration Station Christmas competition!

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Blackmore Vale Line Community Rail Partnership is pleased to announce the launch of our ever popular ‘Decoration Station’ Christmas competition.

As the festive season looms ever closer volunteers from our station groups will be busy creating wonderful festive scenes in the booking halls.  Always an enjoyable time of year when our volunteers work hard to provide rail users with celebratory cheer and captivating Christmas displays. There are many talented crafters amongst our volunteers and this is evident with the high standard of hand-made decorations, garlands and wreaths.   We also have a number of very creative volunteers who always produce some wonderful surprises and little touches to make booking halls look so fabulous during the Christmas period.

Decoration Station competition aims to celebrate and promote the hard work of our volunteers and station staff during this season. It is an inter-station event between the six stations belonging to the rail partnership:  Crewkerne, Tisbury, Gillingham Templecombe, Sherborne and Yeovil Junction and we always include the talented crew from Yeovil Railway Centre.  Our volunteers get on really well, a friendly spirit thrives and the event is viewed as a bit of seasonal fun.

This year there are nine categories to tickle the taste buds of our volunteers:

  1. Deck the Halls – Best Christmas Wreath or Garland
  2. Coolest Santa
  3. Most Captivating Christmas Tree
  4. Winter Wonderland – Most Imaginative Window or Table Scene
  5. Best Christmas Feature
  6. Finest Hand Crafted Christmas Decoration
  7. Star of Wonder – Most Original use of a Christmas Star
  8. Scenic Railway – Ritziest Christmas Train
  9. Most Festive Booking Hall

We are pleased to work with local people with various areas of expertise who form our judging team.  We couldn’t do this without them. Our volunteers are renowned for providing a warm welcome at stations when the judges visit.  Once scored and winners of categories decided, we hold our annual awards ceremony, hosted at one of our stations, where certificates and prizes are given out.

Last year we wanted to engage more fully with rail-users, many of whom expressed appreciation of the efforts of their local station, so we introduced a public vote inviting people to score station displays. The station with the most overall votes (counted as the number of scoresheets) won a big shiny trophy sponsored by BVCRP, now in the hands of Friends of Templecombe Station.  We will be running this again and score sheets will be in stations during the first week of December.

We do hope you will enjoy visiting our stations over the coming weeks and encourage you to have a look at the displays and vote for your favourites. Many groups are holding stations events where a convivial welcome, seasonal refreshments and festive hospitality awaits.  Santa will be putting in an appearance and a little elf told me he will be at Crewkerne Station on Saturday 1st December.  

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