The Tyne Valley Community Rail Partnership has launched the first guide to travelling by rail to visit the UK’s World Heritage Sites.

The guide has been produced with support from World Heritage UK following a suggestion during a project held by the Hadrian’s Wall Youth Ambassadors.

Encouraging people to use rail instead of road transport to visit sites is in line with UNESCO’s Sustainable Development Goals for building sustainable communities and taking climate action.

For people to explore heritage sites sustainably, the partnership realised a guide was needed to help them plan travel by rail.

This led to the “World Heritage Sites By Rail ” guide, which was duly produced with support from rail industry partners, CrossCountry, TransPennine Express, Community Rail Network, and from World Heritage UK.

When individual sites found out about the idea for the guide, their representatives were enthusiastic that such a guide was needed.

The leaflet has 12 pages and can be found online at www.tvcrp.org.uk and a print version is also available at various outlets.

A number of train operators have also taken initiatives to encourage people to travel by rail when visiting attractions, including TransPennine Express and Transport for Wales.

As a Community Rail Partnership, our role is to work with partners to encourage people to travel by train and to engage with and support our communities. Creation of this national guide from the aspiration of young people certainly achieves these goals.

Anne Ridley, Tyne Valley Community Partnership Marketing Director

Promotion of our World Heritage Sites in ways that support and strengthen the UK’s commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals is hugely important to us. We were delighted to be able to give our support to Tyne Valley Community Rail Partnership to undertake this new map highlighting how to use sustainable travel methods to access our sites and we are pleased to have helped bring the ideas that the young people along Hadrian’s Wall had to life

Alex McCoskrie, World Heritage Sites UK General Manager

We were delighted to support the funding of this project. As a train operator our routes directly serve six World Heritage Sites and this map helps people plan some great days out by rail.

It is appropriate that Tyne Valley Community Rail Partnership led this project. The Tyne Valley Railway, Newcastle to Carlisle, runs through Hadrian’s Wall corridor and provides several access points to exploring the Wall. In the late1830’s Scott’s Railway Companion published a guide to the route, making it one of the earliest guides to a railway line. This route has a long history in directing rail travellers to sites of interest!

Alex Bray, Stakeholder Manager, CrossCountry