We opened in 2007 and our forum is still here.
 
We have 368802 posts of which 90 are new posts yesterday and today.. Our latest topics are:
at 18:04: Epping Ongar Railway
at 18:03: Swindon <-> Westbury service updates and amendments, ongoing discussion - 2026
at 18:03: Commuter was left traumatised after trapped inside a train toilet for almost two New topic!
at 17:42: M5 at the Avonmouth bridge closed. New topic!
at 17:35: South Western Railways Waterloo - Bristol services axed
at 17:29: Class 175s to Great Western Railway (GWR)
at 17:20: London bus driver sacked after chasing and punching thief - 25 June 2024
at 16:32: Elderly may lose free travel over Sadiq Khan’s fare rises
at 16:28: WSR50 28/03/2026 New topic!
at 15:24: Day out - 20th January 2026
at 14:26: Travel disruption likely after weather warnings issued for Devon & Cornwall
at 13:08: Inspiration train, winter of 2026 - first South West venue announced
at 12:55: Hastings Diesel - 2026
at 09:58: 19th March 2026 - Community Rail Awards, Derby New topic!
at 09:22: Glastonbury - Castle Cary bus link trial ambition
at 08:54: Tarka Line - Exeter to Barnstaple: merged topics - services, facilities, incidents and events -
at 08:03: Thames Valley infrastructure problems causing disruption elsewhere - 2026
at 07:18: HS2 and UK are not unique New topic!
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News Feed
 
Updated 23rd January 2026

Running cleanly.

• Database caches all fully updated now, some 30,000 flow pages such as ((this one)) now available near-instantly.

• We have added image copyright tagging - see ((here)). This is to help members when posting setting appropriate copyright, especially of images, on public posts, and to inform readers of the copyright.

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Updated 4th January 2026

All running sweetly at present, but may be a bit slow for a couple of days
The Origin and Destination database has been updated to add the 2024/25 data - the tables now include 10 million individual records and the next time any result is requested, it will be a significant piece of computing. We store (cache) enquirys, so once the computing has been done for any particular combination, the result will be regurgitated very quickly if the enquiry is repeated.

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Updated 25th November 2025


As at 25th November 2025, both servers are running steadily. Traffic has grown - most dramatically from autonama inding us for AI and search engine feeds, and code and configurations have been updated to limit their indexing away from sites and engines which are not appropriate for our geographic area or specialist content.

On 29th August 2025 at around 20:30 our backroom server ceased service page but was still visible to our webmaster in Read-Only mode, and an urgent additional backup was taken. It turned out that change at our service provider had been the route cause. The Coffee Shop was restored on a temporary basis at 06:00 on 30th August and steps have been taken to ensure that the problem does recur.

On 25th March 2025 at around 06:15, our cloud server hosted in a London data centre suffered a power outage. Usually these things come straight back up but in a cruel twist of fate, updates were being written at the instant the power failed to the extent that severe damage was done to the disc image. Service restored, read only, that afternoon with full return the following day (26th March). No posts were lost - a good test of our backups, and good practise to check that these systems were in place.

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Following our late 2024 restructure, we are now running using https (secure) protocols. We are moving towards responsive formats to make the site more friendly when used on smaller screens such as phones, but still giving the same access to over 25,000 user-contributed threads of data.

This graphic shows how we have moved on from a single server to a reception and worker set up, with a surge of access once we changed over - mostly explained by search engines re-indexing us.

As we upgrade and modernise the protocols, we are making a number of other changes over coming months. We hope you enjoy new Coffee Shop experiences and continue to be comfortable in the well established ones. The Coffee Shop continues to be free to use and free of adverts. We are here for the public transport passenger, and independent.

Please get in touch with the team in the event of any issues - our users are our lifeblood.

Ready for 2025
We have undertaken a major restructure of the Coffee Shop Forum in the final days of 2024. The Forum is up and running again for 2025 with the same familiar look and feel, and databases too. You will find that there are a few internal changes and things still to be checked out / debugged in the new structure - please report these is not already noted on the forum. The biggest change you'll see is that we're now using secure (https) protocols.