Thursday 15 Dec 2016

Orange army railway workers release Christmas song

Region & Route:
| North West & Central

A gang of singing railway workers today made a rowdy bid to top the Christmas pop charts.

The Orange Army Choristers, engineers from Network Rail's track team at Rugby in Warwickshire, posted "Away on the railway," a re-work of the 1885 Christmas classic 'Away in a manger,' on social media.

Ryan Buckley, an Orange Army Chorister and track operative at Rugby, said: "What we lack in vocal flair we more than make up for in festive cheer - and good looks.

"While none of us are likely to be giving up the day job any time soon, we hope our crimbo crooning brings a smile to people's faces - and reminds them that we, the orange army, are upgrading their railway this Christmas."

The four-verse carol, 45 seconds in length, was posted on Twitter, YouTube and on the company's website.

If you want to sing along, here are the words:

 

Away on the railway

Away on the railway

We work on the track

We're grafting through Christmas

Until we hand back

 

A bigger, better railway

That we’re building for you

One that's quicker and slicker 

Cos that’s we do

  

Just shovelling and grafting

No turkey for us

We're working through Christmas

No moaning, no fuss

 

We are the orange army

And we're working for you

Upgrading your railway

So it's shiny and new

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We own, operate and develop Britain's railway infrastructure; that's 20,000 miles of track, 30,000 bridges, tunnels and viaducts and the thousands of signals, level crossings and stations. We run 20 of the UK's largest stations while all the others, over 2,500, are run by the country's train operating companies.

Usually, there are almost five million journeys made in the UK and over 600 freight trains run on the network. People depend on Britain's railway for their daily commute, to visit friends and loved ones and to get them home safe every day. Our role is to deliver a safe and reliable railway, so we carefully manage and deliver thousands of projects every year that form part of the multi-billion pound Railway Upgrade Plan, to grow and expand the nation's railway network to respond to the tremendous growth and demand the railway has experienced - a doubling of passenger journeys over the past 20 years.

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