Commuters surprise as Northern Rail celebrated World Book Night

Rochdale’s commuters got a surprise on Tuesday evening as Northern Rail celebrated World Book Night on board its evening services from Manchester

Rochdale’s commuters got a surprise on Tuesday evening as Northern Rail celebrated World Book Night on board its evening services from Manchester.

For the third year running, Northern worked with Rochdale Borough Libraries, who are nominated ‘givers’ by World Book Night organisers and helped distribute one million books to members of the public across the UK.

Titles this year included ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ by Tracy Chevalier, ‘Casino Royale’ by Ian Fleming, ‘The Reader’ by Bernard Shlink and ‘Me Before You’ by Jojo Moyes.

Rochdale Borough Libraries has previously donated titles to Friends of Hebden Bridge station, Friends of Todmorden station, Friends of Littleborough station and the Sowerby Bridge station partnership, each of which operate their own book exchange programmes.

Zainib Ahmed, Northern Rail’s Community Ambassador for Rochdale comments: “We were thrilled to be working alongside Rochdale Borough Libraries again and to have World Book Night in motion on-board our evening commuter services.

"A train is the perfect reading environment and our passengers really enjoy this activity every year.”

Joanne Eaves, Stock and Reader Development Manager at Rochdale Borough Libraries comments: “World Book Night is a unique celebration of books and reading.

"A train journey can be the perfect opportunity to enjoy a relaxing read.

"Hopefully, our work with Northern will help us encourage existing rail users to begin another journey on their way home through one of the amazing stories we have on offer in our books.”

Last year, 480,000 books were distributed, with 520,000 sent directly to prisons, libraries, hospitals and other places where books are not readily available, through World Book Night’s charitable partners.