Volunteering

It will be a while before the precise nature of DRA's future activities becomes clear, but we always welcome new volunteers.

Station Maintenance

The Station Maintenance Team is responsible for Okehampton's acclaimed station. Wednesdays and Saturdays are the regular work days. The SMT is a friendly group and the pace of work is usually pretty relaxed. Many of the jobs are straightforward buildings repair and maintenance tasks, to which we bring nothing more sophisticated than the usual DIY skills and a bit of ingenuity.

Carriage and Wagon

Temporarily (as of May 2021) inactive while the situation at Meldon is clarified, C&W volunteers usually work on the DRA's heritage rolling stock at the Meldon workshop. Thursday is the regular work day, but this may change to Wednesday in the future. No previous experience is required - in fact none of the existing team came here with a background in rolling stock maintenance - though we would be only too pleased to recruit volunteers with railway or engineering experience.

See also News Item for June 2nd 2023.

Neither of the above

If you're not interested in the foregoing but still want to get involved, volunteers also maintain the station floral displays, curate the museum, help in the DRA shop, edit the magazine and this website, and carry out countless other tasks. Occasionally it's a matter of all hands to the pumps. If you've a particular interest, come and talk to us about it.

No previous experience is necessary, though if you've a useful skill then we will be pleased to utilise it. Our Volunteer Coordinator will arrange for the appropriate briefings and training where necessary. The Work in Progress page gives an idea of DRA's volunteer activity.

Volunteers need to be members of DRA. More details of membership are on The DRA page.

For more details of volunteering, send an email to info@dartmoor-railway-association.org or contact the DRA Volunteer Coordinator Geoffrey Horner on 01363 82383 or 07769 736536.