DIDCOT Railway Centre is run by the Great Western Society, a registered charity, and one of our aims is general education with particular reference to the Great Western Railway (GWR).

We hope our visitors will learn about railways and heritage as well as having an enjoyable visit.

This got me thinking about all the learning opportunities we have for all ages from the youngest to the much older.

We have a successful programme of school visits for primary schools where children can learn about the Victorians who built the railways or experience a Second World War evacuation.

On quiet winter Sundays, one of our volunteers, Victoria, has developed a series of workshops for children aged between three and six years of age.

These Little Engineers’ Workshops have covered how to make things stronger, how to make things move, towers and coal, and in November the topic will be signals.

For older children we run a Young Volunteers Programme and once a month the young people come along to volunteer.

We have a supervised programme with the young volunteers working on a range of projects from building a G Gauge model railway to polishing the brass on our Broad Gauge steam engines.

Their next project will be the restoration of an original slate wagon.

When our volunteers get a little older they can join our operating staff and train to be a station master, guard or shunter.

The shunter is the starting grade for volunteers who want to go on to fire and drive a steam engine.

Visitors are often surprised when we say that many of our volunteers had no railway experience when they started training, although of course we do have ex-railway staff too.

But operations training is not just for youngsters and we have trainees of all ages from 17 year old students to 60 year old retirees.

The only requirement is that volunteers need to be reasonable fit – operating steam engines is a physical activity – and they cannot be colour blind.

If volunteers want something less physical they can learn customer service skills in our shop and ticket office.

It is never too late to learn.

If you have a young engineer why not bring them along to the next workshop on November 19 to learn about signals.

The workshops are included in our normal admission charge – there is no extra to pay and no need to book in advance, although we suggest you come along early.