Great Western Coffee Shop

Friday, 12th June 2020 - GWR Community Rail Conference.  The year to be hosted at / near Gatwick Airport on the North Downs line.   I would anticipate that a lot of forum members who work alongside / with Community Rail Partnerships and Station Friends groups will be invite to (and will attend) this most useful of days, and it's probable that one or two places will be found for active forum members with no such "traditional" CRP or Station friends links. A much smaller gathering the previous evening of key and distant contacts also provides a significant networking opportunity.

At this stage, posting to let anyone who might be concerned know the planned date and roughly where it will be; I'm pretty sure it's subject to the annual event being included in "DA3" which will probably start on 1st April, or the event being left in place by a. new government operator should it (far, far less likely in my opinion) go that way. Even if it does go that way, I suspect there will be far bigger things they'll be doing that messing with an event which doubles up as a rare opportunity to say "Thank You" to all the volunteers who put in so much time at stations and on community rail lines, and as an opportunity for those volunteers to "meet the manager" and make and renew  network connections to set things in place for effective volunteering ahead.

No surprise, but I was told officially today the GWR Dinner and Conference have been cancelled for this year.