A STEAM railway is appealing for apprentices to apply for a new skills programme.

The Ffestiniog and Welsh Highlands Railway is looking to attract 10 trainees who are looking to ‘make the past their future’ following the launch of their Heritage Skills Training Programme.

The railway, which turns over £10million annually and has successfully built and maintained locomotives since the late 19th century, wants anyone over the age of 18 to consider a new career preserving and promoting the area’s railway heritage.

Thanks to a Heritage Lottery Fund grant of £454,500 intended to introduce heritage skills to a more diverse audience, 10 eager applicants, who must be 18 or over, can take part in a paid traineeship to learn or perfect a new trade, starting this September.

Opportunities for learning include mechanical engineering, horticulture, heritage joinery, rail engineering and track maintenance, heritage interpretation, and heritage walling and fencing.

The positions at the railway business, which employs well over 100 people throughout the summer months, many of them local, are open to anyone and the programme will see 20 trainees recruited over a two-year period.

Paul Lewin, director and general manager, spoke at the launch event last week.

“Our railway thrives because of the tremendous range of skills that our team has built up over many decades. We are very pleased that we have the opportunity to share those skills with others for the benefit of the wider heritage sector in Wales,” he said.

“We are also looking forward to the positive impacts on our own organisation that opening our doors to the wider community will bring.”

He was keen to point out that the positions are open to everyone, not just railway fanatics.

Glenn Williams, who is supervisors of the carriage works, has been at the railway for nearly quarter of a century but comes from a background of art.

“There’s a position for everyone,” said Glenn, who is involved in the painting and sign-writing for the company.

“I wanted to do something with art and the railway allowed me to do that, there’s a lot more going on here than ‘just trains’, there’s some really bespoke work going on that only we are really equipped to do.

“I started coming here when I was teenager on school holidays and kept coming back.

“I have a wonderful team now, most of them under the age of 30, and every day is different.

“It’s a fascinating business to be in.”