In May 2022 a £20M brand new train station opened up in Reston, just a few miles inland from our little village of St Abbs, connecting us to Edinburgh and Newcastle with trains run by TransPennine and LNER. The station was partially the result of many many years of campaigning by local folk under the banner of RAGES – Rail Action East of Scotland. You may ask what this has to do with St Abbs Lifeboat, but in August last year a train rolled into Reston Station, driven by one of the main campaigners from Reston, Barrie Forrest, accompanied by representatives from TransPennine Trains and they made straight for St Abbs to visit the Lifeboat Station. After a full tour of the Station and boat, we were delighted to receive an amazing donation from TransPennine and the promise that they would henceforth work in partnership with St Abbs Lifeboat to spread the water safety message to their passengers far and wide. Since then the friendship and partnership has developed in truly exciting directions.
We have been made, along with the RNLI and fellow independent Humber Rescue, a recipient of their “Delay Repay” scheme where if passengers reach their destination more than 15 or more minutes late, they can elect to have compensation repaid to themselves or to one of the three Lifeboat organisations. This results in donations quite regularly to St Abbs Lifeboat. More exciting still, on 16th January 2026 a group of 8 St Abbs crew and volunteers travelled down to Newcastle to a train naming ceremony. There on the platform was a new train, now called “North Star”, with our logo proudly displayed on both sides and each end of the train, taking our name and water safety message across the country, connecting cities and towns with St Abbs. They also surprised us all with an additional sizable donation to each partner organisation. And of course, an invaluable part of the day was to link up with fellow-independent, Humber Rescue and other crews to briefly but invaluably swap experiences and make connections that are always so hard to prioritise in our busy volunteering lives.
The partnership working won’t stop there either we suspect. This week TransPennine have kindly agreed to sponsor our design competition with local schools to design a Lifeboat Station flag and flag bunting to adorn our village over the summer months as this year is our 10th Anniversary. We first launched in September 2016 and its been a busy 10 years since then with many lessons learnt, friendships made and partnerships like this one created. Our thanks go out to all at TransPennine.
