The Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland Railways have announced that they have been successful in securing a major Heritage Lottery Fund grant, totalling £454,500, to support an ambitious training programme.

The programme will introduce heritage skills to more audiences. The grant is part of the HLF ‘Skills for the Future’ scheme, this programme hopes to recruit twenty trainees over a two-year period.

The F&WHR hopes to attract the new trainees in order to share its heritage skills that its workforce has.

Following the integration of ten new trainees at the commencement of the
programme in spring 2018, the railway is now are now recruiting for the second phase starting in September 2019.

Skills areas covered by the scheme include Horticulture, Heritage Joinery, Heritage Mechanical Engineering, Dry stone walling, Permanent Way Engineering and Heritage Interpretation. The scheme will work in collaboration with local partners and colleges.

What did the officials say?

Paul Lewin, Director and General Manager comments:

“For our national heritage to have a bright future we need to ensure that there are people with the skills necessary to conserve, work with and interpret our heritage assets. It is of vital importance that people from all backgrounds are attracted to be involved in our heritage at all levels. Also as traditional heritage skills diverge from the requirements of mainstream industry, it is ever more important that we concentrate on developing those skills. This program, made possible by HLF, allows us to focus on these challenges in a way that we simply could not otherwise hope to do.”

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