A MUSEUM has launched a website to celebrate 200 years of the railways and to get people interested in writing.

The National Railway Museum (NRM), in York, has come up with its own version of the three 'R's - reading, writing and railways - as part of Railfest, its celebrations of the bicentenary of the railways.

The website, www.moving-stories.org.uk, features short fiction stories and prose submitted by the public, specially commissioned pieces by professional writers and poems and prose by local schoolchildren, all whom have been inspired by the railways.

Yorkshire poet Ian McMillan, who has been appointed as writer-in-residence to oversee the content of the website, was joined by pupils from Tang Hall Primary School, York, to celebrate the launch of the website.

The website has been produced in partnership with the National Association of Writers in Education and York designers KMA Interactive Media. The NRM has also received £28,000 from Arts Council England towards developing the website.

Published: 15/05/2004