Update - post here on this board looking forward to Great British Railways too

[whole diary]

[RailCornwall]

Like the idea or not, this is coming down the line, is it perhaps time to open a sub forum for all things GBR^▸ (Great British Railways) as the megalith emerges?

[Chris from Nailsea]

Thank you for your suggestion, RailCornwall.

I shall confer with my fellow Admins and Moderators on the Coffee Shop forum and let you know!

CfN.

[grahame]

Like the idea or not, this is coming down the line, is it perhaps time to open a sub forum for all things GBR^▸ (Great British Railways) as the megalith emerges?

This forum is nothing if not quick in following up on member suggestions  ...  and we have discussed overnight behind the counter.   There is a temptation, for sure, to add a board or a sub-board - but such temptations can lead to a fragmentation of areas with only a handful of posts and confusion as to where to post.   Can do better to meet the objectives of looking forward for GBR?

* Our "Looking forward, 5, 10 and 15 year" board title / subtitle to be updated to very clearly mark it as the place for emerging GBR posts, where they will naturally sit alongside emerging electrification, regional mayoral stuff, and so forth.

* Immediate posts of what is going on NOW (and threads may move there from "Looking forward" when things eventually happen in "Across the West" or "Wider Picture".

* Our forum does already respond to https://www.greatbritishrailways.info/ which was registered on 26th January 2024  ... but ideally, publicity and sharing should be done through a single domain name so that our search engine presence is concentrated on one name - doing one place well rather than lots of places badly, and also helping to keep spidering down to a level our server can manage.

[grahame]

Board title and subtitle changed - added in the next 2 years as well as 5, 10 and 20

Looking forward - the next 2, 5, 10 and 20 years

Planning for GBR^▸ (Great British Railways), Net zero, and much more - a time of great opportunity and great risk

Also been specific about GBR and Net zero - though there is so much else too as we gaze in our crystal balls and perhaps start seeing some clarity in the pictures they paint.

[ChrisB]

Ok - First to find it on Gov.uk - I understand that the Railway Bill has been laid in Parliament today.....

[Chris from Nailsea]

With my thanks again for your suggestion, RailCornwall, you did start a lively debate among the Admin / Moderator team on the Coffee Shop forum.

That was all good: we have reached a decision as to where such posts should be encouraged to be made - but that's not final. We on the admin team (well, me, probably )  remain happy to move and / or merge topics, if it helps our readers to find particular posts in the future.

May I emphasize again that nothing will be deleted, just because 'it's been posted in the wrong place'. On the Coffee Shop forum, we don't do that.

I may, however, move the occasional post to a more appropriate location. Goodness knows, I've moved a few of my own, when the benefit of hindsight tells me I should have put them somewhere else. 

CfN.

[grahame]

With my thanks again for your suggestion, RailCornwall, you did start a lively debate among the Admin / Moderator team on the Coffee Shop forum.

That was all good: we have reached a decision as to where such posts should be encouraged to be made - but that's not final. We on the admin team (well, me, probably )  remain happy to move and / or merge topics, if it helps our readers to find particular posts in the future.

May I emphasize again that nothing will be deleted, just because 'it's been posted in the wrong place'. On the Coffee Shop forum, we don't do that.

I may, however, move the occasional post to a more appropriate location. Goodness knows, I've moved a few of my own, when the benefit of hindsight tells me I should have put them somewhere else. 

CfN.

Thanks, Chris ... all AOK. Not the first time (and I'm sure not the last) that breaking news is broken in new threads by two members in parallel at the same time, and they are sensibly merged.  And if they're in different boards, that involves a move and a decision which is the better location for the developing topic.  Whose name is on the top of the merged topic is automatic as the posts merged are in chronological order. 

It's often worth merging in sub-topics too ... but where there is a mega-topic (as this bill and its consequences are likely to be), spin-offs and divisions may make sense.  I can recall the extra car park at Tiverton Parkway was a result of the Dawlish washout ... yet logically made a full topic on its own right rather than being hidden within sea wall engineering.  Such decisions are always on a balance and I weighed up the passenger voice element of the bill and whether it should be a separate topic, and decided in my mind that it should be - though I had my doubts.   On that basis, the invite to Chris and other mods / admins to make the call and bearing in mind the enormity of the GBR^▸ (Great British Railways) bill, I remain of the view that major elements (there may be another element on accessibility and others) are best as threads on their own right within the same board.

As an aside, there are a few occasion where I may suggest "this should NOT be merged" against perhaps obvious evidence.  That includes posts that are indexed elsewhere and merging them into other threads will break that indexing.  "On this Day" topics are an example here, as are Facebook shares (anyone can make these) of our front pages.   I feel a new topic coming up to tell members how to do that!