South East Locomotive Group
A new website for a volunteer-run heritage railway group. It is easier to keep up to date than the WordPress site it replaced, and supporters can now donate and join online.
- Industry
- Heritage railway
- Type
- Website, news editor and online payments
- Status
- Live
- Our role
- Design & build, end to end
Two locomotives, and a website that had to keep up.
The South East Locomotive Group has restored and run two Class 33 “Crompton” diesels, 33063 and 33065, at the Spa Valley Railway since 1999. It is led by volunteers, and every pound it raises goes into fuel, parts, paint and examinations.
The brief was to take the group’s old WordPress website and make it modern and sleek, with three jobs underneath. News needed an easier way to post than WordPress gave them. Donations needed to be something a supporter could do online in a minute. And membership needed the same treatment, so that growing the group took less effort for the people joining and for the people running it.
Less friction for volunteers and for supporters.
A news editor that isn’t WordPress
Committee members sign in to a plain editor with the fields an article needs: title, summary, body, photos, category and publish date. Photos upload straight into the article with a caption, and nothing goes public until it is marked as published.
Donations in a few taps
Supporters pick £5 to £100 or type their own amount, then pay on SumUp’s secure checkout with no account to create. A short note beside the figure says what that money does, from running-day consumables to power unit exams.
Joining online
Supporter membership is chosen, filled in and paid for on one page, and starts as soon as the payment clears. Part-Owner and Full Owner involve a conversation, so those go to the Membership Secretary. Renewing with the same email extends the existing membership.
Everything else, in the same place
Events, gallery photographs, the Promo & Sales shop and driving experience dates are edited from the same screens, and driving experience days are booked and paid for online. The old site’s news archive, articles and locomotive histories came across, with old addresses redirecting to their new pages.
Posting an update should take minutes.
Most of what the group publishes is restoration progress, event reports and notices for members, written by whoever is closest to the work. So the editor shows only what an article needs. Each person has their own login, an administrator can invite or remove committee members, and a post reaches the public site when someone publishes it.
- A login for each committee member, by invitation
- Photos upload into the article with a caption
- Draft until someone publishes it
- Web address generated from the title
- News, event reports, restoration updates and member news
- Events, gallery, shop and membership in the same place
Giving and joining, without the paperwork.
Both journeys live on one support page. Card payments are taken on SumUp’s hosted checkout, so card details never touch the site, and the group’s CMS controls the tiers, prices and which of them can be joined online.
Live, and in the committee’s hands.
The new site is live at selg.co.uk. Volunteers publish news, events and photographs themselves, supporters can donate or join by card, and the group’s history sits alongside as it did before.
That is the part we care about most on a project like this: the people who look after the site are doing it alongside the real work of keeping a locomotive running, so it has to be quick to use and hard to get wrong.
The new website is fantastic.
The process of working with the Hillmorton Team was easy, they helped make our visions come to life. Everyone we showed the new design to prior to its release said it was a massive improvement!
Chris SmithGroup Secretary, South East Locomotive GroupRunning a club, society or charity?
If your website is hard to update, or supporters still have to email you to give or join, we can fix both. Tell us how your team works today.