Community rail art winners
Community Rail announced art winners celebrating scenic lines — a Clitheroe Line entry and a Railway 200 artwork both picked up recent mentions — part of a push to boost photography and passenger engagement on local routes. If you hunt unusual station art, these initiatives are worth scouting for frames. (x.com) (x.com)
At the Community Rail Awards ceremony at Derby Arena on Thursday 19 March 2026, Community Rail Lancashire’s The Clitheroe Line: A Picturesque Railway Journey won the Community Creative Projects and Station Arts Award (large groups). (northernrailway.co.uk) Participants in the project travelled the full Clitheroe Line, visiting all ten stations between Clitheroe and Bolton, and the photographs, poetry and drawings they produced were exhibited at Blackburn Market Place on 15 March 2025. (communityraillancashire.co.uk) Community Rail Network says the scheme partnered with Blackburn charity Arts2Heal and engaged vulnerable adults — a cohort described as “over 50” participants — to tackle social isolation and support wellbeing through train travel and shared creative activity. (communityrail.org.uk) The 21st Community Rail Awards drew a record 610 guests to Derby and saw judges review more than 300 entries from across Britain before announcing the winners. (northernrailway.co.uk) Separately, Railway 200 and Art UK announced on 9 June 2025 that Eric Ravilious’s 1940 watercolour Train Landscape was voted the UK’s favourite railway artwork in the public poll. (artuk.org) That Railway 200 vote reduced an original longlist of 200 works to a public shortlist of 20, with Art UK mounting a curated top-20 exhibition online that ran through 31 December 2025. (news.railbusinessdaily.com)
