After a couple of months break, GoodGym Ealing were back at the wonderful London Transport Museum Depot in Acton to partner with All Aboard Club. Overlooking the full size tube trains and buses, the task as always was to build a unique and giant train set for autistic and SEN children.

As usual, everyone started building their own vision, then tried to work out how to connect it to everyone else's pieces of track. Michelle and Sevan started working on neighbouring towns, so had the "how on earth do we connect these?" problem early on, before going on to create and resolve chaos in other parts of the train network.

One of the regular volunteers had grand designs for his track and he wasn't afraid of telling people about them. He told Sevan, then other volunteers how his 4 parallel stretches of track would branch off and merge together with other parts, leading to task owner Richard to say:

"Less talk, more build" - Richard

...and so he did, turning what was in his mind into blue plastic art.

Once set up, the All Aboard Club attendees almost arrived on time, which is rare as they're so excited to get to play with the trains. They were only 5 minutes early today. Another surprise was that they didn't immediately start to rip up and change the lovingly created track. Maybe the troublemakers are away this month 😂.

If you'd like to become a big child for an hour, you can join us next month to help All Aboard Club get their big train set ready at the London Transport Museum Depot. Sign up here for the 12th of July.

All Aboard Club 🚂

This morning Wayne, Alys, & Julie met Richard from All Aboard Club at Brookwood Halls to help build the big train track for the kids to enjoy 😊.

We were joined by a few other volunteers from local organisations. We Helped unload the car and between us took ll the crates into the hall and strategically placed them around.

Alys & Julie started to place the chairs around the hall for the parents then it was time to build. We all started in different area's and started to lay the tracks. within 30 mins the track was looking great. The track had plenty of loops and turns it must of been one of the most technical and interesting tracks we had done, it looked great.

This coming Wednesday we will be doing a leaflet drop around the Goldsworth Park Area for Sam Beare Hospice 😊

All Aboard Club 🚂

This morning Wayne & Priya met Richard at Brookwood Memorial Halls to assist the All Aboard Club with building the big train track for the SEN kids to enjoy 😀

Along with Goodgym volunteers we were joined by young DofE volunteers were volunteering for their awards.

It was great seeing Priya again at a task and was great to catch up. First thing we had to do was place about 20 chairs around the hall for the parents to sit and chat while the kids played.

With so many helpers in no time the train track was taking shape & was looking great, lots of twists and turns, every time we build the track it looks different 😲

Just as the last track was placed in position the kids were coming in to have a fun playful morning 🚂💨

Fun times helping out this great charity.

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