What can you do

So, you are interested in trains, consider helping at a heritage line but have no idea where to start and what to do? This is your page

Most heritage lines in Germany are organized as “Verein”, which means you can join them for a yearly membership fee and depending on the club rules you have some benefits like free rides or you might have some membership duties like working a specific time for the club.

Usually you can do a lot of things at a heritage line, which are railway related, but there are also a lot of tasks where your IT skills or other technical skills are needed:

Running trains need a lot of persons. Usually you will have luggage van helpers, conductors, guards, firepersons, engineers. For most of these jobs you will need trainings and certifications, which can be obtained at the railway, most have an education program to allow you to become certified for the roles.

Old trains need a lot of work to be kept running. Most railways have a workshop and need hands for woodwork, metalwork, electrics, pneumatics (brakes), needlework (seats, baggage nets, …), painting, maintaining diesel/steam/petrol/whatever engines, … So there are lot of areas where you can help out. Most workshops also allow you to learn things, if you haven't used a band saw or a blow torch for welding, you can learn it there.

Some railways have their own lines and need to maintain the permanent way on themselves. If you like heavy work and fresh air, there is nothing better than working on the line itself. This ranges from cutting vegetations to laying track, so also a large variety of skills are needed.

If the railway has it's own line, there is signalling involved. These can be static signals, but usually it involves a lot of mechanical and electrical stuff as well. People who know how to fix old electronics and how to operate mechanical computers are needed here.

While the trains, signalling and a lot of other stuff is kept as historic as possible, running a heritage line involves also a lot of IT nowadays. From selling tickets to archiving technical drawings, from communications to additional safety devices IT skills are needed everywhere. However most clubs do not have these skills and need a lot of help to move to the 21st century.

IT tasks also allow to work from anywhere for the heritage railway, there are websites to be maintained, clouds to be administered, wikis to be populated, drawings to be archived, … There are lot of things which could be done, however sometimes the railway clubs also need to learn that it can be done - most clubs are stuck in the IT world of the 80ies, as most members are not IT people and had their first contact with computers in BTX times, but did not follow along what has happened since.

If volunteering at a club is too much effort and you cannot spend the time for it, there are lots of other opportunities as well. See the page Potential Projects for tasks, where you can support without joining a club.