Great Western Coffee Shop

My Lords (do we have any reading us?, Ladies and Gentlemen ...

The Coffee Shop is coming to BlueSky - the new social media that is sweeping up the crumbs of Twitter in the moderate social media short term message arena.

BlueSky is coming
... to the Great Western Coffee Shop @greatwesternrailway.info (https://bsky.app/profile/greatwesternrailway.info)
... to the wider passenger support  @passenger.chat (https://bsky.app/profile/passenger.chat)

Never fear ... Blue Sky is coming ...

(https://www.wellho.info/pix/bcic1.jpg)

(https://www.wellho.info/pix/bcic2.jpg)

Oops - better avoid the Weymouth Rain

I really don't know where this will go - will BlueSky by another short lived social media phenomena, or will it be like the First Great Western Coffee Shop that I gave a fortnight when we started and here we are 17 years later with 1500 posts a month.

Please sign up, share, follow along with the two accounts and we'll see what we can do.

Blue Sky is coming ...

Great Western Coffee Shop (https://bsky.app/profile/greatwesternrailway.info)
(https://www.wellho.info/pix/bcic3.jpg)

Passenger Chat (https://bsky.app/profile/passenger.chat)
(https://www.wellho.info/pix/bcic4.jpg)

At least one; Peter, Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill, apparently.  ::)

If it's ok to continue the rainy day picture flavour of this thread... probably too easy for a 'Guess where this is (and what).'

Mark

(https://i.postimg.cc/g06RhC1j/train-in-rain-1000.jpg)

Oh, I hate these.  ::)

Is it some heritage diesel line somewhere - just based on the untrampled weeds growing on the platform there?

I'ld go for it being an older picture with a Virgin Cross Country train and a simple double track line and a not particularly big station.  Is the train stopped or just passing through?  Or could it be a Virgin West coast - somewhere like Lockerbie?

OK, the train's a scheduled passenger service making a booked call, and it's on the coffeeshop's patch. And oh boy did it rain.

Mark

Dorchester West?

Hmm. I think that's probably the right answer, MVR S&T.  ;)

This is going back quite a few years when FGW hired in a loco and coaches set to run an extra summer Saturday service between Bristol and Weymouth. If I remember correctly, wasn’t there some sort of issue and it only ended up running for a couple of weekends?

This was before the commencement of the Weymouth Wizard HST service between Bristol and Weymouth which ran successfully for a few years before the 165/166s took over operations on this line.

That was it, yes. A view south too. We'd been visiting relatives in Dorchester. Here's the loco and carriages on the return from Weymouth. A summer day at the seaside. If anything the photo understates the downpour. The only thing to say in favour of the weather is that the torrential rain was of the umbrella variety, i.e. for the most part vertical.

Mark

(https://i.postimg.cc/dVmNptvM/dorchester-west-in-the-rain-1000.jpg)

Back from the rain to Blue Sky - and what should be done with the feeds "we" have and by whom?   There are a million people a day registering  (worldwide) and for all of those people they are saying "we are here ... now what" - it will be interesting to see whether that is just a name grab or whether they visit actively, and indeed that's a choice I / we have to make.   Views / thoughts / comments not just welcome but being solicited.

While Twitter was a place that fed people working in journalism and it might be that Bluesky will supplant it for that, I'd suggest setting the Coffeeshop account to inactive for the moment.

Ye olde short-form social media very much has a place for any group campaigning / making representations on transport though. It's that the Coffeeshop is a space for the exchange of information and ideas - i'm not sure that selectively distilling its content to the Coffeeshop Bluesky account would be sensible, but if people are using the forum to inform groups involved in campaigning/representation - and surfacing said issues via their social media - then this is a positive, because the likes of Bluesky absolutely have a place in campaigning*.

Then there's the principle of using Bluesky to publicise and grow the forum. Since a lot of people use this via the app on their phones, this is a bit dependent on work to convert the forum to be responsive to different screen sizes. (With apologies that I've deflected that back to Graham...)

Mark

In agreement with much / most of that, Mark ... not quite "inactive" but rather a presence that redirects people to the Coffee Shop if they happen upon it, with an occasional headline there to say where we are.  For guests who are reading the public posts on the Coffee Shop, https://www.greatwesternrailway.info is coming along and provides for them on their phones, and with secure protocols.    Growing the forum - getting new contributing members - is being worked on as chances allow to be responsive and https protocolled.  Fair enough to flick that one back onto me.

More of an update at https://www.grahamellis.uk/blog1417.html

Thinking on that, it's useful to be aware of Bluesky's 'Quiet Posters' feed and perhaps pin that to your home page there.

The 'Quiet Posters' feed is an inspired idea - it collects the posts of accounts you follow but that post only occasionally. It's especially useful at present as Bluesky's not 100% infallable at putting everything from people you follow into your 'Followers' feed and it's at this point that the 'Quiet posters' feed becomes a long-stop.

Mark

....................this was a summer day trip to Weymouth too !!!!

(https://i.postimg.cc/KvThmpb5/easy-HDR-export.jpg) (https://postimages.org/)