The Heritage Railway Association has announced new categories as part of an overhaul of its Annual Awards.

Five brand new categories are coming for 2023, which have been designed to ensure the awards continue to recognise the best work across the heritage rail sector.

A new Railway of the Year category has headlined the changes and will be given to the railway, tramway or funicular railway that has achieved or demonstrated excellence in visitor experience, business, safety, equality, teamwork, preservation, restoration or engineering.

Also coming to the awards is Team of the Year – this will be presented to a specific group or team for excellence in their field.

The Infrastructure Award will go to a project that can demonstrate how they supported the development of a railway or tramway.

A new Rising Star award debuts for 2023 that aims to recognise innovation or success by organisations that are new to the sector (a HRA member for less than 10 years).

Finally, there is the new Award for Business Innovation which has been created to recognise creative income generation ideas.

The Award for Diesel Locomotion now includes diesel and electric powered vehicles and now includes locomotives, multiple units, railcars and trams.

Also receiving modification for 2023 is the Award for Marketing and Communications, which will now cover all forms of communication, public relations, advertising and marketing in any format, including digital communications.

This means there will be 11 categories at the 2023 HRA Annual Awards including the highly-respected Morgan Award for Rolling Stock Preservation.

The HRA Award for Environmental Innovation that was new for 2022 is set to return for 2023.

Entries for the 2023 awards will open in early October with the winners announced in March 2023.

Brian Simpson, Chairman of the Heritage Railway Association, said: “The heritage rail sector has evolved at a substantial pace over the last two or three years. We felt that it was time to ensure that the HRA Awards could also evolve to better reflect the huge array of successful and high-quality work that is going on in the sector.

“Our 2022 awards saw more entries than ever before. But it also highlighted that we were not recognising some parts of the sector as well as we could. That’s why we’ve introduced a new category for infrastructure. We’ve broadened the scope of some categories to ensure, for example, that electric traction in its many forms isn’t left out. And we’re doing more to recognise the wider picture with additions like our new Railway of the Year category.

“I know how well heritage railways and tramways have been rising to the challenges of this, sometimes painful, post-Covid, post Brexit world. I hope these changes will allow us to celebrate the huge successes of the sector in its many forms at the HRA Annual Awards.”