About the Coffee Shop Forum
• We opened in 2007 and our forum is still here. Latest topics:at 21:52: And on a hot summer's evening ... New topic!
at 20:25: Nineteen injured in fatal M4 minibus crash - Reading, Berkshire, 11 May 2025 New topic!
at 17:47: Power failure knocks out Tube and Elizabeth line - 12 May 2025 New topic!
... more
Originally the "First Great Western Coffee Shop Forum" and now the "Great Western Railway Coffee Shop Forum", we have 358465 posts of which 22 are new posts yesterday and today. The Coffee Shop is run by a team of public transport passengers, for passengers. We are free and independent. Views expressed are the views of individual contributors. Webmaster email - admin@railcustomer.info in the event of any issues.
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Status:.
QAnd on a hot summer's evening ...
qNineteen injured in fatal M4 minibus crash - Reading, Berkshire, 11 May 2025
lPower failure knocks out Tube and Elizabeth line - 12 May 2025
. : . PRe: Go-Op Cooperative - proposals for additional rail services
GRe: Tilehurst station - facilities, incidents and improvements
\Re: Prince Harry to read Thomas
: JRe: Night Riviera Sleeper train - between Paddington and Penzance
: : : : : : XRe: Shortage of train crews on Great Western Railway - ongoing discussion
: LRe: North Cotswold line delays and cancellations - 2025
: : : XThunderstorms forecast despite driest spring for decades - 12 May 2025
qTrainline shares tumble amid warnings over expansion of London contactless zone
qNew lost and found system sees more items returned
: qRe: trainee drivers will be allowed to drive trains from age 18
VRe: Arrest after rape and sexual assault of two girls at Digby & Sowton, 9 May 2025
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News Feed
Updated 30th March 2025
On 25th March 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.
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 understaken 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.
