Great Western Coffee Shop

A very warm welcome to Lee (back) onto the moderator team. Lee is a rock of positive railway campaigning, with a deep knowledge  of things public transport, including the technical stuff.  He was a founding member of the Coffee Shop some 12 years ago, and in that time he has posted some 6,000 messages; to a very great extend he's my secret weapon having very much taken a researcher role over the years - he can winkle things out as easily as I can overlook them.

We are looking forward to developments at the Coffee Shop.   It has become clear to us founding members that this is no two-week flash-in-the-pan and that we need to gently steer to the future.  "We'll just run it to the end of this franchise" has become something of a joke as we're still on franchises and direct awards in the same series, and mission creep means that we should now be looking at a greater continuity - a real challenge against the technical progress of social media, forums, browsers, devices and data feed.   We have a very strong team anyway - and re-enforced with Lee, and more clearly a separate group from any specific service group, we're looking forward to the next decades.

From being a moderator on two different Bristol City forums can appreciate the work you all put in

Thank you all for your time and efforts

Many thanks to grahame and the moderator team for their warm welcome, and many thanks as well to all you fellow members for liking the opening post, and for your separate messages of support.

There comes a point where you take stock of the past and present, and then the future suddenly appears in sharp focus. What I see is a CoffeeShop forum that has never been more relevant, never been more respected, and never been more needed than it is right now. But even better is the knowledge that these are exciting times, and we have exciting plans going forward.

I cant wait to get stuck in and play my part in helping to take this forum onward into that bright future.