This is the event that was in Barnstaple last year ... this year it's in Swindon. There is likely to be an opportunity for some regular Coffee Shop contributors to come along in addition to community rail and station and line friends groups, and much of the time during the day will be given over to surgeries and market places, with networking and question asking opportunities. Please message me if you would like to attend this day; I'll confirm your interest and suggest you hold the date for now.
Yesterday's
GWR▸ Community Rail Conference in Swindon. Wow - what is there to say about it? A superb day to network, to inform and be informed, to look and learn where we are and where we are headed.
For those of you who took up my invite (above) - I hope you felt the day was useful. There was certainly excellent opportunity to listen to the GWR MD, and others including the Department for Transport, talking - and ask them and others questions / raise issues. Many, many people who know a thing or three available to us, as outlined in my invite. I will post separately on the key public slides looking - with open-ness - at the problems currently being faced. I will note here that the lines singled out as having really drawn the short straw of late are the Severn Beach, North Cotswold, TransWilts and Heart of Wessex.
The TransWilts team of volunteers put on a seriously good show - with a stand at Swindon Station all day on Thursday 14th, a line tour that afternoon, and a "market place" booth at the conference on the Friday. For key volunteers, there was a further networking opportunity on Thursday evening over a meal, and I understand that was very useful too.
Thanks are widely due to the GWR organisers, to the organiser at the Steam end, who is a very good friend of TransWilts, to the
DfT» and to
ACoRP▸ for their support of the event - and to others who I may have overlooked. But also to our volunteer team - a "thank you" which is one of the purposes of the even, together with an ongoing direction, focus, motivation. I'm going to quote below the text of my email just sent around to say "Thank you" to the TransWilts team.
Dear All (defined below ;-) )
Another great day yesterday (15 June 2018) - huge thanks with the setup and manning of the TransWilts stand at the GWR Community Rail Conference. It looked really good, and as I circulated around the other booths and met people, I could look across and see out team in networking conversations with those with whom we were there to network with. And when I drifted by and heard what was going on, it re-confirmed just how deduced, personable, positive and knowledgable our team is.
Chris Austen - when talking about the West Somerset Railway and its links to the national network - brought very much home the enormity of what we have achieved on the TransWIlts. He described the huge issues of ongoing cost and support, of line speed issues, of staffing, of having available stock enhanced to include National Network systems, and passed over but clearly aware of other issues too, which face the West Somerset Railway. We have not had the enormity of starting with a closed railway, but never the less the issues they face to a daily, useable service from Minehead to Taunton and perhaps beyond have all been overcome here in Wiltshire.
As our “home game” we were expected to put on a hansomly superb / superior show to compared to the other
CRPs▸ . Of course, on day to day issues it isn’t a competition at all as we all work very much together; for TransWilts, that is so important as we interface to other lines and services at all bar one stations. From a very biased viewpoint (I admit) I think we / you met and exceeded those expectations. And it was so good to hear within presentations and in general chat just ho much our team is noted as being effective and professional, with others who have aspirations for improvements being directed to take a look at us to see what can be achieved / has been achieved in just one part of the country. These achievements are cross-discipline; Community Rail is built on three pillars - the rail industry, local government and the community. Thursday and Friday were a celebration and a forward looking network and learning opportunity primarily for the community, but the other elements are equally important, and it’s so good to have the support of the good people there, also being aware of restrictions placed on them in their work to help us.
Those of you who were able to attend the Thursday evening reception / meal - please do forward me a couple of pictures so that I can do the publicity stuff into the future using them. I understand there was something of an appreciation of our community team that evening too … and indeed I (briefly) has the remaining section of a cake in my hands last night. Well done one and all!
Although we look forward, and in a none-competing way, with other community rail groups, we also look back, compare, learn from what we have done, and use that learning to also promote our future path. Over the last couple of week, I have submitted two entries for ACoRP’s national awards - our online Forum’s response project to the
GW▸ franchise where we co-ordinated views from a very wide range of knowledgeable people across the whole franchise area, and the second into the “Individual Contribution” category for Paul Johnson, who is amongst a number of our team without whom we would not have achieved what we have. A third entry - for the TransWIlts app - will be submitted over the next 48 hours, using the latest statistics in the “results” section - and I will be updating the detailed text to add reference to Mark Hopwood’s speak / confirmation that the App is form the base of the Severnside and other apps across the franchise. Two out of the three entries are in the most heavily fought categories; I know we have potential winners - let’s hope I have been able to show that in the wording ;-).
Our task at TransWIlts is to help passenger journeys to, from and within Wiltshire - getting bums on seats or (at time) getting seats for those bums to sit on. We have gone from being a line with a service so bad it was useless to a line with a service which - though it remains too infrequent to say it’s “good” - meets the daily needs of so many people and in doing so also has a wider - much wider - economic benefit. Pictured below - last night’s 17:36 off Swindon - so full that the the train manager was walking along the outside before we left, gesticulating to people to move up to allow more on. Granted the current stock shortage had - exceptionally - taken us back to a single carriage; thank goodness it was Friday, which is the quietest weekday on this service - and we did manage to get all the joiners on at Chippenham too.
Last night’s picture illustrates that we still have a job to do. We need to move from the single carriage train being “exceptional” to “never”. We need to fill the service gaps - the previous train ran well over 2 hours previous, and the addition of interlaced services taking us up to hourly will more than double our current traffic as people move from “I will plan my train - then see if I can plan my day around it” to “I will plan my day and then catch the train that runs around then”. We need to have a seamless service southwards to Warminster, to Salisbury and to Southampton - the most popular leaflet at Swindon Station on Thursday which confirms other previous evidence of the need for that linkage. Much, much more about that at our Stakeholders’ conference next Wednesday (20th) in Trowbridge where I look forward to seeing many of you - all invited, but I appreciate that your time as volunteers is precious (and indeed I appreciate that time!)
One and all - many, MANY thanks for all your help over the past few days, and over many months / years prior. I know you enjoy most of it - but never the less it is hugely appreciated each and every time you’re involved and I look forward to having so much more fun in the future!
Graham
P.S. Please feel free to share the above - let partners / colleagues know how much good you’ve been doing, and thank them too for their support of you and indirectly of us. I know for some of you there are considerable personal arrangements to be made to come along and help.
For Friday: [names redacted from public copy - being careful on privacy laws]
Thursday thanks also to: [names redacted from public copy]
Copy - [recacted] - with thank to you to for your massive part in the setup and smooth running.
Graham Ellis -
grahamellis@transwilts.orgCommunity Rail Officer, TransWilts Community Rail Partnership
A division of the TransWilts Community Interest Company (
CIC▸ )
http://www.transwilts.org - 0845 459 0153 / 01225 708225
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