The Kent & East Sussex Railway (K&ESR) is hoping to score a notable hat-trick at the Heritage Railway Awards to be presented by television personality Tim Dunn at a ceremony in Birmingham on 19 March.

The first nomination is Sarah Tagart (25), from Ashford, who is a finalist for the Lord Faulkner Young Volunteer Award. She led a campaign that resulted in 175 new volunteers being recruited to the railway in just 12 months.

That is a record for the steam railway, which runs through 11 miles of the beautiful Rother Valley from Tenterden to Bodiam, and attracts more than 80,000 visitors in a normal year.

Steam is in Sarah’s blood as her grandfather was a railwayman and she followed in her parents’ footsteps by volunteering on the Isle of Wight Railway. In 2013, Sarah joined the K&ESR and has worked as an operations controller, guard, and fireman. She said “Volunteering at the railway has made Kent feel like my home. I moved here from university eight years ago and it has given me a whole second family.”

The railway has also been nominated for the environmental award. It is the first heritage railway in the UK to switch to biodiesel, which releases just 195kg of greenhouse gas for every 1,000 litres of fuel burned, compared to 3,600kg for traditional diesel. The railway’s fleet of diesels and track-maintenance machines have been running on biodiesel since last summer, with favourable reports of them never having run so well.

An amazing restoration of the first passenger coach to be obtained by the railway has put the railway in line for its third award. The coach was built in 1911 for the North London Railway and bought from Woolwich Arsenal, where it was used on workmen’s trains.

Despite Covid restrictions, the K&ESR Railway Carriage and Wagon volunteers continued work on the coach. They took taking parts home to restore brought them back to the railway looking like new when work could restart in the carriage shed. Their efforts were rewarded when the now immaculate ‘Woolwich Coach’ formed part of the first train to run after passenger services were able to resume.

K&ESR General Manager, Shaun Dewey, said: “Maintaining the Kent & East Sussex Railway requires a large number of staff and volunteers in many disciplines, and we are delighted that their efforts and skills are being recognised at the Heritage Railway Awards. We wish them all success on the night.”