In return for his efforts, Northern has taken 13-year-old Kieran Glover on a special tour of the region’s railway command centre.

Growing up close to St Helens Junction station, Kieran developed a passion for trains at an early age.

His visit to the Rail Operating Centre gave him the chance to learn firsthand how the region goes about co-ordinating train services across the region.

Last year at age 12, Kieran officially became the youngest person to adopt one of Northern’s Merseyside stations.

Hundreds of adopters are already active across the network, working in partnership with Northern to keep stations tidy and well-presented.

Starting with litter-picking at the station, Kieran moved on to gardening activities to make St Helens Junction a great place for people to catch the train.

In a highlight of the tour, he met with operational and signalling teams who explained the various aspects of train scheduling, signal operations, and safety protocols.

As well as developing the station garden, Keiran is currently working on a railway photography project along with his fellow volunteers and his mother, Lauryn.

Over half of Northern’s stations have adoption groups. If you are interested in setting up your own station adoption group, please send an email to [email protected].

Northern is the second largest train operator in the UK, with nearly 2,500 services a day to more than 500 stations across Northern England.

We really enjoyed our visit to the Rail Operating Centre. We learnt a lot while we were there – there’s so much more that goes into it all than we realised, even Keiran who is the train enthusiast amongst us.

I think it has given him even more things to think about career-wise. We feel really privileged to have been able to see ‘behind the scenes’ like this.

Lauryn Glover, Kieran’s Mother

Our community partners are the heartbeat of the railway and we are extremely proud to work closely with them to deliver such a wide-ranging positive impact for the North of England.

Craig Harrop, regional director for Northern