Great Western Coffee Shop

The ACoRP Community Rail Awards recognise and reward the hard work and dedication of the community rail family. This year’s awards will be presented at a gala dinner, being held in Scotland for the first time at Glasgow’s Doubletree by Hilton, on Thursday 4 October.  Entries can be made using the online entry form on the ACoRP website. Closing date for entries is 09:00 on 18 June 2018. Closing date for dinner bookings: Friday 7 September 2018.

Categories are:
1. Involving Children and Young People
2. Involving Diverse Groups
3. Community Art Schemes
3a) Permanent and larger projects
3b) Renewable and smaller projects
4. Most Enhanced Station Buildings and Surroundings
5. Small Projects Award (£500 or less)
6. Best Community Engagement Project
7. Best Marketing or Communications Campaign
8. Influencing positive change
9. Photo and video competition: ‘community rail in action’
10. Outstanding Volunteer Contribution
11. It’s Your Station
and ... The ACoRP Award for Outstanding Contribution to Community Rail

Full entry booklet is at:
https://communityrail.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/FINAL-High-Res-CRA-18-Entry-Booklet.pdf

From my mailbox:

TransWilts and Coffee Shop entries at:

* http://atrebatia.info/2018-acorp-app.pdf
* http://atrebatia.info/2018-acorp-pj.pdf
* http://gwr.passenger.chat/2018-acorp-cs.pdf

Noting that the submissions were made via a many-box form, with individual pictures and attachments separate from the text body, so  the above .pdfs are my own jigsaw construction of (I think) most of the pieces I used

Short listed entries will be notified in the next couple of days.

All three entries have been shortlisted.   Congratulations to the admin and moderators team here and all the members who came along and contributed to the Didcot meeting and subsequent franchise input.   And congratulations to Paul Johnson of TransWilts for his individual nomination, and for the TransWilts App which he spearheads.

Full short list at https://communityrail.org.uk/awards_18_shortlist/ ... and we have some stiff and excellent competition as you would expect.

On the Coffee Shop entry, we have competition from Helmsdale in the North to Seaford in the South ... across all categories I keep seeing Severnside and Devonand Cornwall CRPs crop up - congratulations to them - and I notice more local entries for the Avocet line and for Dawlish - congratulations there too.  Please post any other GW shortlists you spot in the list - it's late in the day and I'm going cross-eyed!

Sharing my TransWilts Facebook post.

This week, the Chair of TransWilts (Paul Johnson) - who has been shortlisted for the ACoRP national "Individual Volunteer of the Year" award for his TransWilts work – discovers whether he's made the podium. From amongst 58 community rail partnerships and around 1,000 station friend's groups, Paul's already made the top 8 and will be going head to head against nominations from Wranbess, Penmere, Glossop and Girvan amongst others. We wish him luck.  Of course, it really shouldn't be luck – for who else has taken a service up from 2 to 9 trains each way per day ... who else (just this year) has lead the community element as we've moved from a single carriage train at bursting point to a 3 carriage service, and seen the opening of platform extensions at both Melksham and Trowbridge.

The TransWilts job, meteoric thought the rise of the line (with Paul's lead) has been, is not complete. Passenger numbers at the midline station of Melksham have risen from around 3,000 journeys a year to around 75,000 – but analysis suggest that number should grow to over 250,000 per annum over coming years. For the past year, a combination of factors including engineering works, new types of trains, and staff shortages caused by the extra training needed have resulted in a reliability that has been significantly below target. Next week is the final week of the "Newbury" engineering blockades, and staff training on the new train types should be more or less complete by the end of next month. So we can look forward to a step forward in 2019.  We can also look forward to work on further service improvements, a new Melksham Station Hub building, and a new TransWilts team member to look after day to day issues such as marketing, volunteer co-ordination, and community and passenger outreach.

With services less than perfect, and work still to be done, should TransWilts be entering for awards?   Yes – absolutely; it gives us the opportunity to take a look at ourselves and ask "are we doing right"?  And having basically concluded that, yes, we are doing right, Paul's attendance at the result announcement event on Thursday evening will give him the opportunity to network with country wide influencer and decision makers to help him pull attention in resources into Transwilts's ongoing work.

See – entry at http://atrebatia.info/2018-acorp-pj.pdf . Illustration – Paul Johnson (centre) with Paul Webster of the Association of Community Rail Partnerships (left) and Kulvinder Bassi of the Department for Transport (right) earlier this year.  Even this picture is out of date as the platform has been extended from 1 to 3 carriages since then – thank you Paul.

Word reaches me from the ACoRP Awards 2018 in Glasgow tonight, 4th October 2018, that the Great Western Passengers' Forum (aka Coffee Shop) has placed third in the 'Small Projects Award' category.

The Great Western Passengers' Forum was nominated in this category for "Informing responses to the Great Western franchise consultation."

See: http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=19037.0

Pictured below are forum administrators Graham Ellis (grahame) and Bob Morrison (bobm), and forum moderator Lee Fletcher (Lee), receiving the award from Jools Townsend, ACoRP Chief Executive, and Alex Hynes, ScotRail Alliance Managing Director.

(https://image.ibb.co/dHDJrz/IMG_4379.jpg)

(https://image.ibb.co/jsH6uK/IMG_4380.jpg)

Well done!

Very well done for the whole team.  Congratulations.

Thank you - from Lee, BobM and Grahame

Neither of the TransWilts entires that had made the shortlist (Paul Johnson as Individual Volunteer, and the TransWilts App) were places in their categories, but both deserve huge congratulations for making their shortlists.

Massive "Well Done" to other winners in the South West - we will be detailing later - but of note were Severniside's repeated appearance on the platform, and them winning the ACoRP overall award for contribution to Community Rail.   Wow.   Congratulations to Keith, Heather and their team at Severnside.

Well done particularly to you Grahame for your perseverance over all the years when many would have given up in disgust.

Well done to all concerned. Hope that you have a trouble free journey home Grahame

Will report later.  Day job in Coatbridge today - there now, writing code - or rather awaiting coffee  ;D

Nice little Industrial Museum in Coatbridge, Sunnyside Museum, mostly industrial but also has an operational tram and short stretch of track to run on. Also the home of a preserved "Glasgow Blue Train" but it doesn't look as if any work has been done on it since delivery to the site. There is also some aspect of waterway life in evidence plus a preserved cottages community and the shared communal backyard dating back to the 1800's. One side of the site is bounded by the Helensbrugh/Glasgow(Queen Street) to Edinburgh via Bathgate line from which the "Blue Train" can be observed.

One of these days, I really must look up that museum.

I was at Sunnyside by 07:30 and after a breakfast roll and coffee with my client at 08:00.  Just left ... on the 15:24 from Motherwell headed south, having had a lift while we finished planning the next stages of work to maximise time.

So so pleased for Graham and everyone who plays a part in the day to day of the Coffee Shop forum with all the many and varied posts. It’s been great to have been a part of this forum almost from the start and to see it still going strong in 2018 is Brilliant!

Congratulations. Always good to get recognition from outside the group. Does this men a large influx of new members??

Winner's pictures all online now at https://communityrail.org.uk/events-training/community-rail-awards/2018-community-rail-awards-winners/ - all bookended by Jools Townsend (ACoRP) and Alex Hines (Scotrail)

Here's another of the Glasgow Central tour I found on twitter from Paul Bigland....I recognise someone over on the right....

https://twitter.com/PaulBigland1/status/1047792187390545921/photo/1
(bottom right - click to enlarge)

Someone over on the left too..

It was a fascinating tour with a guide very passionate on his subject.

A fascinating tour ... some pictures that aren't the same as you may have seen from others:

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/vicglas.jpg)

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/vicglas2.jpg)

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/vicglas3.jpg)

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/vicglas4.jpg)

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/vicglas5.jpg)

The orange baseball cap suits you, bobm. :P

Press release

https://www.gwr.com/about-us/media-centre/news/2018/october/celebrations-for-community-rail-success


Eight awards / placings in GWR territory - 3 of them Severnside including the big one. Full details at link above.

"Our" bit in the GWR press release:

Plans to further develop the tour (which we were aware of last October) blessed by Network Rail and expanded public in The Scotsman (https://www.scotsman.com/news/transport/plans-to-restore-hidden-platform-beneath-glasgow-central-on-right-track-say-network-rail-1-4881434)

This year's ACoRP event will be at Telford ... now what will there be to see there ;D for anyone who gets to go. 

Twitter link saying account suspended!

Yes, Paul was a naughty boy attacking the anti-Hs2 mob....he's set up a new account, but his old account is now more.