Great Western Coffee Shop

The Coffee Shop forum is hosted / run / administered by a team which considerably overlaps with the volunteer team at the TransWilts Community Rail Partnership (TWCRP), and much of the activity on this particular board relates to the activities on and surrounding the line to help make best use of the resource.   

The TWCRP website is at http://atrebatia.info - we have a number of other active domains but as various elements come together they are being consolidated into that one.    You'll find us occasionally handing out a short URL using the .info domain - such as http://twcrp.info/timetable .  Our constitution as adopted on 31st August 2013 is at http://atrebatia.info/TWCRP_const.pdf and our first AGM was (on that day) scheduled for 7th February 2014.  Interim officers are: Sion Bretton (Chair), Peter Blackburn (Vice Chair), Phil McMullen (Secretary), Chris Hankin (Treasurer) and Graham Ellis (Press and Publicity). The constitution allows for a president role, but that's optional and the initial decision was to leave the role available but unoccupied.

To accompany the formal invite to the AGM (which will be published in the next 48 hours), the following text places the Community Rail Partnership in context - last year, this year, and beyond.  I'm adding it here (and will make this a sticky topic) as an introduction for newcomers.

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The TransWilts Community Rail Partnership (TWCRP) aims to achieve positive, sustainable and imaginative development of the TransWilts (Swindon to Salisbury) railway in ways which also benefit the places it serves, including enhancement of services to meet the current and future travel requirements of those places.  It sees the line as an essential link for the local communities and businesses along the route, and as part of the projected strategic north - south rail link through an area experiencing major expansion. The TWCRP liaises with all relevant parties to promote the social, economic and environmental prosperity of the local communities.

2013 saw significant progress with the addition of extra services on the middle section of the line from 8th December, raising the service from 2 trains each way per day over this section to 8 (Monday to Saturday) and 5 (southbound), 6 (northbound) on Sundays.  The additional trains are operated by First Great Western and seed financed through a Wiltshire Council grant under the Local Sustainable Transport Fund from the Department for Transport. Ancilliary improvements, including stations, access to stations, and publicity and travel planning are also part of the LSTF project.

During 2014, First Great Western, Connecting Wiltshire, and the Community will continue to work together to promote the services and stations, and to identify issues and make adjustments where possible to increase service use.  It's anticipated that this activity will continue but at a lower volumes per passenger carried in future years.

Also ongoing with current effect, but with longer term outcomes, the Community Rail Partnership will be looking at changing and developing requirements along the TransWilts corridor from Swindon to Salisbury.  This will relate not only to passenger needs, but also to operational changes on other (and our current) services and the opportunities these offer in allowing our service to be amended / improved to make best use of the changes.  Financial considerations and ensuring that we are in the right place at the right time are elements of this strategy.

Finally, the TransWilts is the backbone of public transport in Wiltshire and we initiated, run and will continue to run a biannual meeting of transport groups in the county. These meetings allow the various groups to be informed of each other's news, missions and activities and wider special interest matters. They allow co-ordination of aspirations and interactions with governmental, regulatory, funding and operating organisations for the mutual benefit of all parties.

We have a good number of volunteers and associated bodies, but we need to move forward organisationally to make the best use of those resources and to be encouraging of new resources and ideas. "Membership", "Newsletters", "Station Groups" topics.  Financially, we operate at low running cost and are budgetted to be funded through the current 3 year service period. Longer term, we will consider our own funding as one of the elements of considering longer term requirements.

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Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/TransWilts
Twitter - https://twitter.com/transwilts
Email - info@atrebatia.info
Website - http://atrebatia.info
Phone - 0845 459 0153
Correspondence - 48, Spa Road, Melksham, SN12 7NY

Train Operating Company - First Great Western
Local council sponsors - Wiltshire Council with LSTF grant aid from Department for Transport

Tickets, times and general enquiries via National Rail or via First Great Western
The Community Rail Partnership is delighted to hear feedback / answer questions too.

Thanks for posting that, grahame.  :)

Personally, I am encouraged by the consistently positive note contained in all of those points: we now have a realistic basis for consolidating and even improving upon that new service pattern on the TransWilts line.

The whole story is intensely positive for the majority of people.   There is, however, a need to watch out for and answer people who say "it doesn't / didn't work for me because ....", to keep an eye on how the service is going and analyse time when that might not be brilliant, and to talk about things that aren't yet with us but are planned.

We've set up another board - rather like Frequent Posters - that isn't public accessible so that our well established local and industry team can report and chew these things over, and in the next few days we'll be adding "TransWilts Member" access for the team and supporters.   It won't be a big group, but it will let us consider things around.

Once it's there, it will be at:
http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?board=41.0
but give me a chance to at least seed it with a couple of posts!

This extra board is now up and running, and I have given around 20 members "TransWilts Member" access to it.  If you're one of these, the link above will work.  The 20 members initially selected have all posted recently on the TransWilts area of the forum, have a good knowledge of the whole picture of how there are both positive and negative aspects to any rail service, and have consistently shown that they're in support of having this forum, and the train service, run and do well.   The selection mechanism has been a bit of a routine application of criteria, and if you would like to be included but haven't been (if, for example, you're fully supporting but happen to have posted more generally of late rather than in TransWilts), please send me a personal message. 

Now has 32 members, and over 100 threads.  Latest subjects:
* TransWilts - ongoing experienced supporter discussions and information
* Early summer newsletter and passenger counts
* Loadings, cancellations and other issues
* Chippenham Conservative candidate Michelle Donelan's election leaflet - concerns
* 17:36 relief
* TransWilts CIC vision 2020 - station sites
* Change to summer plans
* More uncollected fares
* Saturday 28th March 2015 - Person hit by train, Beanacre near Melksham

Please let me know if you would like to be added

Funny how things go around in cycles.  At the TransWilts board meeting on Monday, the current board asked me to close the special "TransWilts Member" area, and links from http://www.transwilts.org to the Coffee Shop are being removed.  This is to provide clarity of separation between the CRP and its parent CIC, and the delight of mixed views that the Coffee Shop encourages you to post.

The extra board has risen over time so that some 60 members have been able to read it, and I am in process of redistributing the posts to ... TransWilts Line ... Frequent Posters ... and many other boards.   So those of you who have NOT been in the 60 will find "new" posts from the last year.   More to be transferred tomorrow - there's been about 9 pages of posts in 4.5 years!

May I thank you for your prompt and appropriate action in those circumstances, grahame.