The aim of every All Aboard Club task is to create something complicated by beginning with lots of simple pieces. It's always interesting to see the end result from the creativity of all of the volunteers and today was no different.

There was a big group today to complete the build and they included Siobhan who was at an All Aboard Club task for the first time and her son, Laurence, who Siobhan had recruited for his first GoodGym task. They'd both been on London Transport Museum Depot tours in the past and were excited to get involved with the task. Welcome Laurence! 👏🎉

Through the session, the track flowed outwards to fill the whole of the mezzanine. Challenging junctions were put in to cause the attendees to interact and loose ends were tied up. Most loose ends, anyway. Ten minutes before the children were due to arrive, there were 7 parallel tracks that didn't connect to anything. Sevan foresaw a Junction of Doom ™️.

"We've run out of track" - All Aboard Club volunteer
"There's plenty of track, it's how you use it" - Sevan
"You must be a management consultant" - Richard, task owner

Sevan went to scavenge some useful track pieces from around the floor, then helped the AAC volunteer come up with a plan. The volunteer managed to complete the track before any children showed up. Phew!

Siobhan, Laurence and Sevan set some trains zooming around the track as the first children arrived and watched how the attendees interacted with the track that the volunteers had created. There was even enough time at the end for Siobhan and Richard to chat about groups that All Aboard Club could reach out to, based on Siobhan's local knowledge.

Finishing early? That's unheard of!

Come on baby, do the locomotion

Woo woo !!

All Aboard Club 🚂

This mornings task at the All Aboard Club there was a major milestone. It was Nadia 50th good deed 🎉. Nadia joined Woking GG In April 2024 & over the last 10 months has got to her 50th total in double quick time. During this time Nadia has sometimes done 3 good deeds in a day, 😲 Amazing stuff and also in that period Nadia running has improved so much and long may it continue 🏃🏼‍♀️. Hopefully on the next task Nadia will be showing off her new black GG shirt 😀. We will also try to arrange a social get together to celebrate.

Wayne & Nadia came straight from volunteering at junior park run and were met by Lauren. There were also a few new faces from another charity to help us build the giant train track for the kids to enjoy 😀.

Once again we were welcomed by Richard our expert train track builder 🚂💨.

First task was to get 30 chairs and place them around the hall for the parents to sit on, once this was done we all picked a corner and started to build. It was great catching up with Lauren who has recently got into hiking and was telling us about her latest walk in the mountains in South Wales 🗻 and her up coming expeditions in the lake district, hopefully eventually doing all of UK's highest peaks 🥾

This mornings train track when completed looked amazing full of twists and turns and plenty of ups and downs the kids were really going to enjoy it. 😀

A great morning of volunteering, hope you all have a great rest of the weekend and see you all soon. 💫

GoodGym Ealing were back helping All Aboard Club today after a break over the winter. In addition to Sevan, they welcomed Carmen for her second good deed and Amelia for her first task with GoodGym. Amelia was so enthused by building a huge train set that she travelled all the way from Watford for her perfect task 👌. Welcome Amelia 👏🎉!

The group helped move boxes of track pieces and trains up to the mezzanine level of the London Transport Museum Depot, then after a quick intro to All Aboard Club, got stuck into building. Sevan and Carmen started making loops that then joined with other sections, while Amelia teamed up with other All Aboard Club volunteers to pick up tips and tricks to making an awesome track for the children.

There were lots of volunteers, so the floor space was filled with complicated plastic squiggles in only 45 minutes, which was lucky as that's when the first children started arriving. They were 15 minutes early, as often happens.

Some trains started running around the track and that highlighted problems, including a loop that had 4 entries and no exit ♾️. Amelia and Sevan responded, spending 15 minutes trying to engineer a solution with the few remaining bits of track and the small space available. They eventually came up with something elegant(ish) that fixed the problem and completed the track building.

Wayne, Charlotte and Nadia were this month’s volunteers for the set up of the All Aboard Club’s train set for children’s playtime. The organisation supports children with ADHD and SEN.

Wayne and Nadia had been to Junior Parkrun beforehand so today was a double day for them. They arrived early and had a good chance to catch up. 💬

Soon after all the other volunteers arrived and we were joined by Charlotte who was telling us of her busy morning managing her household! It was great to see Charlotte again. 👋🏼

We have a few seasoned train track builders now so the team have more intuition on how to choo choo choose and place the tracks. It was an interesting configuration again and as always we were excited to do the final step of placing the choo choo trains on the tracks. 🚂

Some early arrivals jumped straight in which was a delight to see.

Great job everyone on a happy Sunday!