Bringing colour and sustainability to Charing Cross station with Glasgow Wood

As part of ScotRail’s Adopt-a-Station initiative, international consultancy COWI commissioned Glasgow Wood to build some brightly coloured raised beds and barrel trains. With the help of Alzheimer Scotland and St. Patrick’s Primary School (COWI’s nominated charity and school partners for the Glasgow office), they’ve brought colour and character to the station platform and stairwells.

COWI’s Glasgow office has a team of six who’ve been co-ordinating the Adopt-a-Station initiative. They asked their school partner, St Patrick’s Primary School, to design posters to promote positivity and wellbeing for the station stairwells.

When it came to involving Alzheimer Scotland, the COWI team thought I’d be a great idea to have some planters built to help promote their invaluable services. It was ScotRail for recommended planting equipment suppliers Glasgow Wood.

Julie McCormack, Social Value Manager, said:

“We met with Glasgow Wood and were really impressed with their inclusive approach supporting local people to provide them with skills and experience, recycling of timber and also being a social enterprise.”

Once they’d been built and delivered by Glasgow Wood, it was over to COWI’s Adopt-a-Station team to install them.

When recalling particularly memorable moments from the project, Julie said,

“moving two tonnes of soil from the station entrance down two sets of stairs definitely stands out for me… a massive team effort. But seeing the young peoples faces light up when they saw their posters on display made it completely worthwhile.”

At the install event in June, pupils and representatives from Alzheimer Scotland and Glasgow Wood were invited to COWI’s St Vincent Street office for a celebratory lunch.

GW Managing Director, Danielle, said:

“It was lovely to meet with everyone involved in the project, including the pupils.

To see the original paintings which feature on the stairwells was a highlight. We also chatted to Sandra (ScotRail’s Community Rail Executive and manager of the Adopt-a-Station initiative) about the project and what night be next.

These raised beds and barrel trains are a simple but really effective way of brightening up any station platform. We’d really love to see more of them about.”