IT was lovely to see everyone at the ‘Didcot: Get on Board’ event at Cornerstone.

It was a great event and we were proudly displaying the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service on our stand.

It is inspiring to see how much is going on in Didcot and the wealth of talent in the town.

The day was also a great chance to network with volunteers in other organisations, so watch this space for ideas about future events and collaborations.

In the past 12 months, only about a fifth of our visitors came from Oxfordshire whereas the benchmark for all the museums is nearer one third.

This is both good news – in that we attract a national following and bring people to the area – and bad news, as people do not tend to visit their local museum.

Didcot Railway Centre is very easy to get to and very well connected by public transport and we hope to see a lot more local visitors in the next 12 months.

Didcot Railway Centre offers a lot of unique experiences and while we cannot offer everything on every day, Father’s Day on Sunday gives us a chance to show off some of the things that might be of interest to dads and, of course, to mums and families.

For the whole weekend, in addition to unlimited train rides on our two demonstration lines, we will have a display of ‘O’ gauge models on display in the carriage shed.

The display put together by one of our volunteers features a large collection of Great Western Railway and other Swindon built rolling stock, coaches, brown vehicles and goods wagons.

On Sunday there will be guided ‘behind the scenes’ tours around the loco works to see restoration projects in progress.

These will include access to the lifting shop, which is usually out-of-bounds to visitors.

We are also offering dads the chance to ride on the footplate of our steam or diesel engines for a small additional charge.

And of course all our usual attractions are open so if it is a nice day, visitors can watch the trains from the picnic area.

We have signed up to the South Oxfordshire Charity Lottery so if you fancy a flutter go online to the SO Charitable Lottery and buy tickets to support Didcot Railway Centre.

Tickets are only £1 per week and there are prizes up to £25,000.

Finally, we’d like to flag up the Didcot Business and Community Awards – now in their 10th year – so please start considering who you’d like to nominate. It could be us!