Restore Island Rail

What do we use donations for?

Keeping the Corridor in the minds of Island Residents

Before we started advocating for the Island Rail Corridor, residents had all but forgotten that we had a track running right through the heart of our South Vancouver Island communities. With the last train running in 2011, newcomers didn't understand the connections it use to make, and could make again, but in a better way than last time. So we look for the best bang for the buck to get the word out. We...

We Show Up at Community Events

Community events are a great place to reach out to residents to help raise their understanding about the potential benefits of our island railway and the risks on us taxpayers if we fail. While staff are volunteers, some events charge to attend and it costs money to set up and get to events. Restore Island Rail needs to cover these expenses so we can show up!

Advertise on Social Media

There's only so far you can reach posting to the confines of a social media account. Cross-posting to social groups comes with occasional blocks from admins that don't agree with the railway, or we can be labelled a spammer if we share too often. In order to reach beyond those barriers we need to pay for advertising.

We Create Community Track Clearing Events

Bringing communities together to clear vegetation from the tracks creates an enjoyable social space to meet like-minded people. They build a sense of pride in the community, and provides a great opportunity to share the vision of rails with trails in a safe space. The Society intends to fund maintenance trailers so they crews have the right equipment for the job.

We License tools used to create Social Media impact

The daily image and video posts in support of the railway takes a lot of time to create, but it also costs money to license the tools and the stock media that are needed to do it. Restore Island Rail Society intends on investing in better capture equipment so we can create content using more footage of the island railway.

We're creating visibility items

We've started with the giant 10'x3' banner for our event table, flags for cars, and hats and shirts for volunteers, but this is only the beginning. We want people to be able to express their support for island rail with wearable items and things like bumper stickers of the Restore Island Rail roundel. Let's see what our swag coordinator comes up with in the future, all powered by your donation.