The Amazing Lunches Came Second to the Railway

The parents’ association, the Friends of The Downs, has a committee with a Chair, a Treasurer, a Second Hand Shop Rep and a Railway Liaison. Our PTA has a Raffle Lady, and she is me.

You would expect the children to fight over the driving. The Downs Light Railway Trust, the charity whose volunteers keep the line going, wrote in 2021: “We often find that the children are more interested in this area than actually driving trains around the railway!” The area is the workshop. On one day pictured in the same booklet, two children stripped down, cleaned, refitted and tested a petrol engine in four hours. Our lawnmower has been waiting since May.

In June 2026, the day before the Summer Celebration, the school reported two pupils and two Trust volunteers busy on checks, from water pressure leaks to “signs of rust deposits inside the firebox: technical details that many of us take for granted.” Our summer fair’s safety check is me counting the float twice. The rides went ahead.

Katie Holder, a parent looking back in the same magazine, remembered her own Summer Celebration jobs: “running a tombola stand, cooking sausages and manning the railway crossing”. I have run a tombola. I have cooked sausages. Nobody has ever trusted me with a crossing.

Our school has no railway, so I have raised one at the PTA meeting. It is minuted under Any Other Business, proposed by the Raffle Lady, who has also volunteered for Liaison.