SEVERN Valley Railway has appointed its first female apprentice.

Emma Harrison, aged 17, is one of five new recruits to enrol in the Heritage Skills Training Academy, fulfilling a lifetime ambition of working on a heritage railway. Miss Harrison, who lives in Wolverhampton, has been a volunteer on the Talyllyn Railway in mid-Wales since 2011, joining the locomotive crew on their early morning starts to clean the engines and see them out of the shed for their day’s running.

She said: "It was normal that a family holiday would include at least one trip on a railway and it’s still true today that we always manage to find a railway to go on, even when abroad.

“A great saying in our family is ‘a holiday is never a holiday without a railway in it’, which developed my love for railways and steam engines, and got me involved in heritage engineering.”

By being accepted into the SVR’s HSTA, Miss Harrison is fulfilling a family legacy, as her late grandfather was a member of the Gloucester and Worcester Railway, as well as a financial supporter of the SVR, along with her grandmother.

Also joining Emma on the HSTA this year are Alan Brookes, aged 19, from Stourbridge, Tom Hubble, 20, from Birmingham, and Dean Parkin, 17, and Ryan Parsons, 20, who have moved all the way from Launceston in Cornwall and Wimborne in Dorset, respectively, to take up their places in the academy. All five new trainees beat off stiff competition to be chosen from dozens of enthusiastic applicants from all over the country and abroad.