Knutsford Station Staff Win Rail Team of the Year

After receiving glowing reports from customers throughout 2015, Northern Rail’s Knutsford station team have been recognised as Rail Team of the Year at the annual RailStaff Awards.

Cheryl Thorne and Roy Wilson of Knutsford station said: “It’s like being in a big family rather than customers and staff - we’re overjoyed.”

Alex Hynes, Managing Director for Northern Rail was delighted to see so many colleagues nominated and recognised: “What a fantastic achievement for our people. In January this year, Knutsford station won the 'In Bloom' award for Cheshire in partnership with the Mid Cheshire Rail Users Association. The team at Knutsford and their helpers have transformed areas of the station into a peaceful and beautiful environment for our customers.”

Later that same month, 'Team Knutsford' were in the local paper after going out of their way to help a customer who had missed her train.

Other Northern nominees highly commended on the night were Pam Williams for Rail Manager of the Year, Keith Matthews for Station Staff of the Year and Rachel Stockton for the Samaritans Life Saver Award.

The RailStaff Awards, which is supported by the Rail Alliance and Young Rail Professionals (YRP), is an annual industry event recognising the hard work, courage and professionalism of the men and women who build, operate and maintain Britain’s railway.

Now in its ninth year, the 2015 event was held at Coventry's Ricoh Arena on October 10. This year, the awards had an ‘Out of Africa’ theme and recognised the best of the rail industry under the #PrideOfANation banner.

RailStaff Awards 2015 received around 1,200 nominations, approaching 40,000 votes and welcomed close to 1,000 guests on the night.

Rail Team of the Year was sponsored by Softech Global, which provides signalling, telecoms, permanent way and OLE services to the UK rail industry.

Noting the importance of the work that station staff do, managing director of Softech Global Manoj Agrawal said: “I think it’s very important we recognise the individuals within the industry.”

He added: “Often it is the company which has been recognised… the individuals feel a bit left out that they have done the hard work and somebody else, their MD or the director, has won the award.”

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