All Aboard 🚂

NEWS

A massive shout out & good luck to Maya who is in Chicago to do the Marathon at some point today, will be keeping an 👀 on Strava.

A big welcome to Agathe who joined us today for her first task. Agathe heard about Goodgym while she was in London and is looking forward to join the Woking team 😀

Anne ran to the task this morning and in total did a distance of 15k this morning (She is a Machine 😀)

Wayne & Lauren came straight from this mornings junior park run. Once at the venue we met up with Richard and a few other volunteers to build the train track. First thing we had to do was take out 16 chairs and place them around the hall for the parents to sit. Then the fun stuff began.

We are started at different areas in the hall and started to build the tracks towards each other hoping that they would all connect.

Lauren & Agathe were very creative giving the train track an extra dimension 🤣

Anne was letting Agathe know what Woking GG were all about and that we were having our 7th birthday celebrations next week hopefully Agathe will come along and meet the rest of the crew.

In no time we had finished just in time as the kids were arriving to enjoy the train track 🚂

Well done everyone great job this morning see you all next week. 😀

Julie and Anne met at the Memorial Centre in Brookwood to complete this week’s task.

We worked with other volunteers to help “All Aboard Club”. The club runs play sessions across London and Surrey for autistic ADHD and SEND children who they build and play with giant train sets in a safe, understanding and supportive environment.

It took us record time to finish the sophisticated track and it was tempting to have a go at trying it out ourselves.

We wondered if Nadia was happy with the Italy Run London 5K, we are sure she appreciated the pasta provided at the end of the race. We also thought of Becky, our amazing GG member, who was taking part in the Dorney Lake Triathlon.

Meanwhile, we supported remotely James and Adam who were running the Polesden Lacey monthly trail 10Kms as well as Maya who is training for the Chicago marathon and planned to do a Long Run this morning too.

There is no task for this coming Wednesday, but we might decide to organise a training run?

In the meantime, happy running everyone.

GoodGymers from Ealing and Hounslow combined their engineering greatness this morning to create a huge train track for autistic and SEND children to play with and interact with each other. Not only were they "doing engineering", they were also surrounded by engineering marvels as All Aboard Club are trialling the Transport Museum Depot in Acton as a new location. That's pretty awesome 🚇

The group helped unload the last boxes from task owner Richard's car and entered the building to see where they'd be ~~playing~~ working. As they climbed the stairs, they found themselves on a mezzanine level, looking over the historic tube trains in the depot. Exciting for both the volunteers and attendees.

The mezzanine area was big, so it was good that there were 10 people to build the track. Like the children attending, they worked by themselves, then over time, they connected their islands of track to other islands and soon, the whole floor was covered.

As the loose ends were being tied up, the first children started arriving. Sevan joined Richard and the Depot staff in guiding the children and parents in through the gift shop, trying to keep them from being distracted, past the big trains, up the stairs and to the small trains for them to play with. Emmanuella, Gus, Alan and Steph stayed upstairs to help the children and parents, maybe having time to set a few tank engines puffing around the track themselves.

Today was another opportunity to play with All Aboard Club's giant train set for Madhan and Sevan. All Aboard Club had 2 first timer volunteers too, which led Richard, the task owner, to say that Sevan was the most experienced volunteer and could guide the others in building an awesome track layout. gulp 😅

The group started slowly, getting to grips with building the track, then by half way through it was full speed ahead, with each of their islands being joined together to make a layout that spread all around the room.

"I'm here for All Aboard Club"

...said someone who poked their head through the door. The group hoped that it was one of the missing volunteers, but it was actually a parent who was very early.

Soon, Richard announced that there were only 10 minutes to go. Time to start tying up all the loose ends of track, grafting them into the existing layout. Almost everyone tried to simplify, except for one person whose track was branching out instead. That was sorted just in time for the first child to arrive.

"Look, there's a giant house!" - first child

The first child in stepped right over the train track and went to the wooden play house at the back of the room and completely ignored the 1 hour art installation. That wasn't the reaction that was expected. Richard said that that wasn't unusual and the train set would grab their interest soon enough.

It was lovely! I stayed on to help for the whole of the session, from 9am to 1pm, I got to meet lovely people and have a nice morning. It always feel good to see kids having fun.

Steph, Michelle and Sevan were one rail engineer light this morning for GoodGym Ealing's early service. Still, they were excited to be helping All Aboard Club to create a fun yet complicated train track layout for SEND and autistic children to play with.

There were 6 volunteers in total to get creative with 7 big boxes full of track pieces, bridges and rolling stock. One of the volunteers even looked like a pro, bringing their own knee pads. Steph and Sevan went straight into building their own mini railways, while Michelle, whose first time it was with All Aboard Club, was given some track building advice before getting stuck in too.

Between the volunteers, they managed to put together:

• An never ending loop, guaranteed to result in poor passenger satisfaction scores
• A tourist branch, taking a scenic loop of a corridor outside the main hall
• Double and triple bridges!

Once they'd linked their individual pieces, they thought they were done. Then task owner Richard asked them to go even bigger, so they did.

Track laying was completed right before the first train driver (and imaginary, fare paying passengers) burst through the doors. They were super excited and the first thing they wanted to do... was change the track layout with their own modifications. Everyone's an critic 😂. That was the cue for the GoodGymers to leave, before all their hard work was remixed and ripped apart.