Management summary -
Don't Panic - this is a look back, as a basis for a logical look at where we are and where we should go forward
I'm starting a long story - starting a long, long time ago. Back in the bleak winter of 2006/2007 when a newly merged "Greater Western" superfranchise combined the old InterCity Great Western, the Thames Valley Services, and Wessex Trains under the old InterCity manageent - a franchise seemingly dedicated to maximum payment during 10 (or 7) years, with scant attention to socially necessary services running busy / full at some times of day but overall making a loss, and to a planned growth of just 0.8% per annum on 2004 data which had already been burst by 8% annual growth in two years since the minimalist spec was drawn up.
The story of those times was a dramatic reduction in caoacity, a drastic reduction in the number of services across "The West" area, and a dramatic increase in cancellations rates. Adding the icing on the cake of fare rises. Result? Unhappy passengers, yet no real sounding board for them. Passenger Focus was charged with ensuring that the rules were kept rather than ensuring the rules were fair; traditional rail user groups weren't set up for immediate response, and neither looked beyond the rail travelling public to the wannabe traveller who didn't travel by train because the offering wasn't appropriate, even though it could have been.
So up stepped a number of blogs / campaigns -
CANBER▸ , More Train Less Strain, First Late Western, Worst Great Western, Save the Train are names that spring to mind. "Save the Train" was mine - registered and active a year before the sh*t hit the fan, when I discovered that the new specification cut my town's train service by 60%, that the "consultation" had been mostly overlooked as it was obscure and unpublicised amongst many on us who's businesses were heavily dependent on public transport. Intended as a "one week wonder", Save the Train was intended to bring the forthcoming breaking of a lifeline to the the communities on that line and see if anything could be done, even at 11th hour, to Save the Train.
Well - we failed in our immediate objective. Amateurs against a large professional / government (local and national) establishment that understood much more than we did about how to set and follow a policy - we were sidetracked, kicked into the long grass, ridiculed for what we asked for (personally, by the minister on national radio!), told we didn't understand ... and come the end of 2006 our service was indeed cut right back - and our pious hopes that the trains that
DID» remain would be the busy ones - into Swindon at about 08:15 and back out at 17:44 - were dashed. We were left with a service which - in this week's Rail magazine no less - was described as being "at weirdly inconvenient times". Hardly used, too ... most short journey people are making day return trips, and if you take a single weird up train, add a single weird down train, you find that even if you can find a potential "up" customer, the "down" time won't work for them. And - gallingly - pictures of withdrawn and unused trains started to appear in my inbox. Whilst it was galling, it was also gratifying as it gave us a bone to bite on, it helped confirm our sanity in suggesting that the new service was not appropriate, and that it was worth continuing to ask for an appropriate service, whatever that meant!
In the bitterly cold and dark mornings (figurative and actual) at the beginning of 2007, a travelling public who had been largely unaware of the storms to come a month previously were starting the new year with a rude awakening. Assurances of "teething troubles" that came just after the december timetable changes had worn thin. I was drawing cancellation graphs and even on our new crap service had to extend the axes as days went without trains. Re-assurance that it would get better weren't proven correct in the short term, and jokes made to us that "you still have 80% of the carriages calling - just in 2 trains not 5" showed a lack of understanding of the problem.
I was ... amazed ... that I was able to register the domain firstgreatwestern.info. And to hold information for passengers about the company, its operations, and to help explain why things were as they were, it seemed like a valid and logical name. And there was a demand / need / requirement we (that's me and my co-founder) felt to help explain. I hope I'm a reasonable person much of the time, and - for sure - it wasn't sensible to "carry fresh air" around; changes to make things more efficient were a logical move forward and without progress we would still have every train run by steam engines, smog, inefficiencies ... or perhaps no rail business at all because the economics would have meant total closure apart from a couple of museum pieces. So - we set up the coffee shop.
The domain name and forum didn't go unnoticed. Good - it was intended to be noticed!. And that notice brought questions concerning use of name, of how we were able to register that domain at all, etc. The site was intended to have a short shelflife; firstly because of an anticipation that we would be pressured to give up the domain and would have to do so, and secondly because issues and people move on, and the issue would become yesterday's issues.
It wasn't given up. Issues did move on somewhat, but we found ourselves very much there swept along with that moving on - and indeed here we are, over 100 months later, still rather active ;-). Much has changed - both with us and with First and there's a big element of "Poacher turned Gamekeeper". Though to be fair, there were always lots of excellent people at First, and we always wanted the heart and soul of the railway to work.
But some things have not changed. The site's still hosted on "spare" space on a dedicated server that I happen to look after (and pay for) as part of my day job. It's still done as a "labour of love" in my spare time. It's still running the same application software. And there have always been shortcuts / kludges which are fine for a limited life project, but lead to long term issues. And now - with a rebranding of the "firstgreatwestern" into
GWR▸ / Great Western Railway on our radar, with old software relying on function calls that are already deprecated and are removed in the next major release, with data feeds that we've used for years being reformatted / turned off there's a need to look forward and say "where do we go from here". Even sticking with the old and letting it gently fade isn't an option. Firstly, we wouldn't want that - this site has made some incredible differences for me and for others here, and secondly we were faced with our web space provider requiring us to upgrade due to emerging security issues with ancient operating systems.
Some readers may be thinking "gosh - I never thought of those issues ..." but fear not - although of necessity the whole thing hasn't been done with the robustness that's required of rail industry products where a malfunction can cost lives, it has been done with an increasing and emerging view to these issues, and the admin and moderator team is very much in the picture. And with very much a view to the future. Work remains to be done (and I would really appreciate input / help in certain areas) and I'm not going to post up promises that I can't keep / are just aspirations. But we have every intent of maintaining our historic and useful database of information (and fixing searching to make it work better!) and our registered and active user base. You may find a new / alternative name, you may find that personal message archives are no longer accessible past a certain date. You may find new navigations and feature changes. And whilst free to use, free from advertising, free from sponsor editorial influence remain as "bedrocks", in truth I have been the sponsor and have had that influence - topic to think through. It's very much the intent to keep the vast majority of content public readable too, and to progress and continue to work so closely as customers with willing experts in all areas just as we have done. Still very much a resource that the casual user can come to find those obscure answers - and indeed be driven here by searches; one of the things that many members may not be aware of is just how much guest traffic we have as it doesn't show up in (m)any of the normal stats.
I'm getting older. I've purchased my senior rail pass now, I've started travelling the day before I start an IT course these days rather than starting at Silly O'Clock in the morning. We have grandchildren and dogs. For the first time from last week, I've had to pull out of more than two days of committments for health reasons (starting to come back now - brain still functioning) and things move on. Eight years ago I wouldn't have believed ... that we could set up a Community Rail Partnership. That we could be working so closely with the industry to promote the TransWilts service (I always had faith that common sense would prevail and our weird service would be amended to something appropriate). That we would be looking at refurbished and new stations. That we would be party to strategic planning. That we would take a wider (Wiltshire) view of public transport as a whole, and rail sometimes beyond the narrow confines of services operated by
FGW▸ . That I would make such good friends here. And those things delight; with age, and with increased business pressure, I took a conscious decision to reduce my load in January and elements of that have happened, but over coming months and years of neccessity there needs to be more of that.
But - I'm posting this in "Looking forward - 2015 to 2045" because I am looking forward - and so is the team here. Come 2045, I'll be about the age my Dad is now. And he's planning to be on the "Wizard" on Saturday, just like I am.
edit only to correct a couple of typos
