Great Western Coffee Shop

A quarter of a million posts - who would have thought it when we set up this forum back in 2007 - but yet that's the size our database reaches this weekend.  We have over 2,000 members including many loyal ones who have been with us since early days - 17 of the first 100 people to sign up (we hit that number in October 2007) have already logged in during the first 3 weeks of this month - that's out of over 260 members logged in.  We also have a massive readership of people not logged in - thousands each month - ranging from the professional lurker through to the one shot wonder who finds the answer to a question here via a web search. Most find the resource valuable - 3 out of 4 stay to visit subsequent pages on the Coffee Shop (i.e. click through links within their arrival page).

The First Great Western Coffee Shop remains relevant today, just as it was a decade ago. 

It remains a place where passengers can discuss issues relating to their train and other public transport journeys in the south western quadrant of the UK.  Where they can learn about travel and ticketing opportunities, progress of engineering works and warnings of upcoming changes

It remains a place where people deeper into public transport issues can discuss how things are going, help make constructive suggestion to the rail industry and government (local and central) as to mutually beneficial improvements, co-ordinating and informing views for the help of all concerned

It remains a place where passengers - and rail staff too - can get a quick overview of where there are current operations issues, what's being talked about, and what the talk on the street is about.

And it's become a place where friends meet - a community of largely like-minded people who are broadly very supportive of the provision and use of effective mass public transport, though at times they'll not be in agreement about how that should be done - or indeed how well it's being done at the moment.


The Coffee Shop has been incredibly stable.  When formed, Douglas Alexander was Secretary of State for Transport, and since then the post has gone to Ruth Kelly, Geoff Hoon, Lord Adonis, Philip Hammond, Justine Greening, Patrick McLoughlin and Chris Grayling.  "First Great Western" has become "Great Western Railway" and we have moved from Alison Forster through Andrew Haines to Mark Hopwood. Here, member numbers 1, 3, 7, 38 and 90 still form the backbone of the active moderator and admin team. My huge "Thank You" to them, to the rest of the team who have added fresh ideas and skills, and a breadth of knowledge that allow the Coffee Shop to be online, active, friendly and more or less on topic 24 x 7.

The Coffee Shop was formed at a time of retrenchment.  Trains on the Cardiff to Portsmouth line had been cut from 3 carriages to 2. TransWilts services via Melksham had been reduced from 5 trains each way per day to just 2. I recall that in the peak hour, the number of carriages calling at Keynsham on the way into Bristol was down from around a dozen to just 4. But - goodness me - how times have changed. The north Cotswold line has had substantial redoubling, the south Cotswold completely redoubled from Swindon to Kemble. Just this week, Filton Bank's 2 track bottleneck has been re-widened to four tracks.  Reading station has been totally rebuilt, and we're now in process of a major electrification and modernisations scheme. There remain some disappointments - it's over 10 years since a discussion about services to Okehampton started on this forum, and our Portishead thread is even older than the Okehampton one; goodness only know when the first train will run through Bath (with its air quality issues) under electric power, or in to Oxford. And still we lack a late train from Bristol to Chippenham, or from Swindon to Melksham. But how much we have to celebrate with a great deal headed very much in the right direction.

Posting rates on the Coffee Shop have increased over the last 18 months - interestingly, bucking the trend of such fora to move toward Facebook and other social media - so when will we reach half a million message?  I don't know. But I do know that we need to upgrade our forum software that's now running on an out of date under fabric that's getting progressively harder to maintain and impractical to enhance to provide our members with improved facilities that now should be available. And where we had 10,500 posts in our archive a year after we started, it's a very different kettle of fish to have a quarter of a million and headed up ay a rate of around 25,000 per annum.

The Coffee Shop's admin and moderator team enjoys an excellent relationship with our train and bus operators, with key figures in local and central government, and with other community organisations involved in the support and promotion of public transport. At times we are candid friends - not afraid to say where we think unfortunate decisions have been made (we far prefer to get in before thy are made, of course!) or errors made / chances missed.  But at the same time helping to explain some of the issues that make apparently "no brainer" ideas impractical, or to help passengers understand why certain frustrations are not easily sorted. And we're very much in a position to (and we do) alert our members and the wider lurker audience to opportunities - be they trips that people hadn't thought of making by public transport, or ticketing opportunities that help make a day out affordable.

And so, more and more, the Coffee Shop fits the ethos of a Community Rail Partnership.  CRPs are changing next year too - just as our software and structure needs to do to set us up for the next 10 years.   There's already a diary date on the forum (9.2.19) for an in real life meeting to look forward constitution-wise and I won't pre-empt what our members think we should and should not do, but I do note the change from "designation" to "accreditation" of CRPs, and I see opportunities for the Great Western Coffee Shop to continue delivering, to deliver even better, even more robustly, and be even more a pleasure for me personally to work with, yet allowing me more self time and a gentle had on to the younger generations I see on the trains, and who the whole of the Community Rail and Rail User Group community is working (in many cases struggling) to embrace.

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I have just released tickets for our constitution and planning meeting on 9th February 2019 ... On EventBrite ((here)) (https://www.eventbrite.com/e/great-western-coffee-shop-forum-constitution-and-planning-tickets-52974243388) or via Facebook ((here)) (https://www.facebook.com/events/920027104849824). 

Initial public discussions are at http://gwr.passenger.chat/20324 and the poll on what sort of event it should be and the Coffee Shop diary entry is at http://gwr.passenger.chat/20342 (yes, those URLs are similar!).  There's a tie-it-together thread at http://gwr.passenger.chat/20654 and for frequent posters, a discussion of forum funding and next year's plans for that at http://gwr.passenger.chat/20561.

It's definitely been an interesting journey. I wasn't here from the start, but when I arrived I found an informative forum, peopled by a interesting bunch of contributors.

There have been highs and lows, but it's a measure of the success of the forum that I've not been able to keep away! That success is down to the team of administrators and moderators who steer the shp through the waters, whether calm or (very rarely) choppy.

Here's to another ten years and another quarter million posts. I've worked out that 6.4% of those posts are mine. Sorry if I've wittered on on occasions.  :P

Yes, well done.  Hopefully I have been, and hope to be able to continue explaining the 'dark art' of railway signalling to you all ;D

To my mind those last two posts sum up the success of the forum.  The informed amateur and the seasoned professional.  Both willing to contribute and assist those seeking information or to explain why things are done the way they are.

It’s certainly a major part of my life - I look forward to the half million mark!

It’s been a pleasure over the last ten years to give my opinions, as welll as advise and learn.  I’ve never known a large forum with the levels of politeness and respect for other opinions as you get on here.

I wouldn't call SandTEngineer an informed amateur!  :P ;) ;D

I wouldn't call you a seasoned professional.....   ;D

S&T Engineer’s comment about the dark art of signalling reminds me of a visit to Pontypridd signal box during an week long assignment with BR, as part of a industry work experience required by the school in which I was teaching in the 1980s.

Once the signalling inspector had left I was thrown the cloth and told to set the route and inform the adjacent box. As soon as I had sent the bell code the ‘bus phone rang. It was to enquire as to who was signalling the train.

He had recognised the difference in tapping out the code between the signalman and myself!

WARNING. Off post.....
That was also said by many older telegraphists.  Post Office and related areas. They could always recognise a different fist on the key (morse key).
When in radio college, lecturers could always be identified by their different styles (fists as was called).

RETURN to topic post

I would echo that as a relative newcomer. I realised how it was beginning to affect my life last Monday on my commute to work when recalling the previous weekend's posts-

1 - while waiting for my train at Goring I watched the pantograph on the Electrostar calling on the opposite platform to see how much it deflected the overhead line (less than I expected, perhaps only 5 cm/2 inches I'd guess); and

2 - on arrival at Guildford and walking along Platform 2 to the gateline I checked to see if the turnstile for the toilets were still out of action and bypassed by opening the gate at the side (they were).

I must get a life!

And it was certainly one of the tools at Bletchley Park.