Great Western Coffee Shop

The railway is a network - and the power of the network is that it provides over 2,500 destinations for passengers spread right across (though rather unevenly) Great Britain.

The service on the TransWilts line, the Swindon to Westbury section, was essentially a new one from December 2013, and on three days in October 2014 volunteers from the TransWilts Community Rail Partnership surveyed passengers on the trains, working alongside Wiltshire Council and First Great Western to get an insite as to how the service is being used, including the journeys people are making.

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/twjourneys.jpg)

This diagram shows the stations - over 100 of them - that people started or ended their rail journeys at over just that short period.   If we were to rerun the survey again over another three days, there would be many stations repeated - but also a number of others would come up all over the country which weren't mentioned in October.  And the plot only shows the data for those people who returned their forms to us.

When working towards an appropriate (useful and used) service on the TransWilts line over a number of years, I have tried to remain focused on the objectives at hand, and not to suffer from "campaign creap" too much.  Clearly, objectives defined in the early days did turn out at times to be impractical, or poor objectives in the light of research and learning, and needed to be amended or changed. And, once the hype of sabre rattling in the early days to get onto the radar was over, it became very much a question of working with everyone together for their skills and resources and our local knowledge to come together to make a very powerful team though which an effective new / improved set of service could be delivered.  If there was an open door leading in the sort of direction we wanted to go, then we pushed on / passed through that door, rather than trying to change the system or set precendents.  The objective wasn't a global one, or a UK wide one - it was to look to our own region, and to gain there from the experience and precedents set by others.

So - how does this "Coffee Shop" forum fit in?  It started way back in 2007 as a discussion group for wannabe passengers (and passengers) who were concerned about train services in "our area", and we identified "our area" as essentially that wedge west of London served by the Great Western franchise.  There was an element of guesswork in that area choice - it was an easy one to define, and a large enough area to give us a certain momentum of numbers, yet small enough to be reasonable local to us in that members can for a large part identify with the things spoken about and the operator(s) concerned across the forum. Looking at the map of journeys made (above) and reading some of the hot issues currently being talked about, I'm reasonably happy that we've got the balance right.   Over time, we have added boards around the boundary for other rail companies operating towards the area, and "club" zones for regular posters as we have built up a comradeship.

I mentioned above the choosing to use doors that have already been open (or at least unlocked) to move forward, and that remains my personal thought.  However, there are elements of the rail system, how it works, who's who, and how it could / should be that can be open to criticism.  Discussions of such things are healthy in the wider aspect, and indeed we encourage them here. However, my personal involvement in such discussions has become more muted over the years as my objectives remain fixed on helping to support an appropriate service for passenger on (and connecting widely beyond) the TransWilts line, and for me to call for political and systemic changes that would seriously harm the interests of those people we work very closely with would be somewhat foolish.  But, yes, I can be a 'critical friend' at times.

In the last year or so, we've had over 100 trains per week to promote as opposed to 35 in previous years, and the additional services have been cleverly designed (thank you First Great Western and Wiltshire Council) to mesh with existing trains and provide a still-lean but very useful combined service. A few things don't mesh too well on Sundays, but there are plans to sort that out!  And we've had a major promotion job to do in terms of informing people who have hardly ever (sometimes never) used a train before that they do have a station, and a train available .... and that it can work for them.  Somehow, I've fallen ino partly filling the role of a Community Rail Officer - as a volunteer - in helping with the press and publicity and co-ordination.   We have lots of volunteers our there - there must have been over 20 people in the carnival parade in July, a similar number helping deliver door to door in August, again around 20 in October when we did our surveys that have given us such valuable data, and yet again around the same number in December on the "Santa Train" and the folk music trip.  Those aren't the same volunteers each time - though we have a notable and very much appreciate core of a handful who have given, and I hope continue to give, so much more of their enthusiasm in 2015.

I've loved the time that I've put in as a volunteer, but it's had / having an impact on other committments I have - a business to run, and a family to name two that come very high indeed up my list.  The Community Rail Partneship is tiny - with (essentially) just one carriage to support, as compared to the other four CRPs across / abutting to the First Great Western area.   Three of those four pay for their community rail officer (though I think it's done by the people concerned much more for the love of the railways and the role, with huge out-the-norm involvement) ... but then those that work that way are into 10+ carriages on their lines at any one time.  Money invested in the community aspect of rail is worthwhile - we have figures for that, and there's a door that's unlocked / open that encourages the investment to be made.

At the TransWilts AGM, it's planned to formalise the structure into the TransWilts Community Interest Company under the existing objectives and constitution of the Community Rail Partnership.  This is being lead by the current officers of the CRP (of which I am not one) with both eyes set firmly on the future. During 2014, a couple of our active and very experienced team have retired from full time employment, and they (and other who have less other committments than a fulltimeplus job) will be able to take on much more of the role, and with some limited financial compensation for so doing too.

As for myself, I start the new year with work away in Hounslow, Swansea and Cambridge in January, in addition to running the business in Melksham.  I have rail committements in Melksham and Bristol during the month, and have sent my apologies for the AGM in Trowbridge already.  I have to miss another meeting I really wanted to attend in Trowbridge, but such is the balance that I can't turn down a week's work just to go to a talk, even if on the vital subject of Bath blockade diversions.   But having said that, I do need to ease back, and indeed there has been some criticism over the past year or so that I've been taking too much (and too strident) a role at times, and I know there are around half a dozen people (who I will not name here!) who will feel this move of my position is long overdue.

I look forward in 2015 to travelling a lot by train, to continuing to advocate the TransWilts, and hopefully this year to picking up on a backlog of my regular work, and getting a holiday too. Need to get to know the grandchildren too.