My thoughts are ... that I'm very happy with the way things are continuing to evolve, here on the Coffee Shop forum.

Thank you, grahame.

 
The Coffee Shop forum will continue to operate throughout the Christmas and New Year period.  I'm having some thought a to tweaking / tuning / taking forward the Coffee Shop - which were shared with the moderator team a few days ago - to be undertaken during this quieter period.

Nothing to be done as mind-blowing as the changes last year, mind for which we had a brief daytime down time.  Littler things - but potentially a myriad of them.   Some of the items on my list

* Add in the 2024/25 station usage stats and prepare for the ticket flow data that I would expect to be avail mid-January

* See about loading more / all of the current NR timetables (but already done)

* Improve the phone interface read only pages and how they interface to the commenting / logged in pages of the Coffee Shop.  Remove the need for cookies to be approved every 24 hours, and I need to take some internal steps to stop acceptance tables running away.

---

On something of a tangent, you may notice the number of views per topic is not increasing as much/quickly as it used to.   However, threads can now be read via the receptionist server and the numbers logged do not reflect that, as the receptionist has read-only access to the public post and thread databases and they are not counted.  I would not like to guess as to whether the net visits are more of less; I do know that our receptionist served 18,700 thread pages on Friday and 16,700 yesterday without reference to worker server. 

On Friday, some 336,000 requests were made to our receptionist, of which 136,000 were passed through to the worker and resulted in successful responses, with a further 36,000 being thinned out as being request by search engine which we don't want to be indexed.

Thoughts welcome.

 
From the BBC:

 
This 'new topic' is something of a seedling.

It will be expanded as I trawl through the archives of the Coffee Shop forum and move / merge here many previous posts which relate specifically to this iconic line.

In the meantime, my following post may be regarded as 'the seed being planted'.

CfN.

 
Google's navigation routing does know about the Two Tunnels route (i.e. put in start and end points of 'Midford' and 'Oldfield Park Station). Even then the data it has for height seems to be a bit scatty. I *think* the summit of the old line in Lyncombe Vale is ~61 metres above sea level. Google plumps for 106 metres as the highest point and for good measure puts the summit at the south end of the tunnel.

Mark

 

It's almost like they have a vested interest in promoting (self-driving) cars...

 

From the map, it has struck me that Barnham might make a good hub for significant housing expansion- or are there other factors that would mitigate against that such as flooding or SSSI status?  Railwards, connectivity is excellent with services toward Brighton, Horsham and beyond, the Solent area and local services to Bognor Regis and Littlehampton.

 
Sunday December 21

1W15 07:36 London Paddington to Great Malvern (10:15) : held Reading (+27), Wolvercote (+35), Evesham (+54), arrived Worcester Shrub Hill +55 and cancelled thereafter. Ascott - Evesham scheduled 30, actual 35.

 

That's right - the area became fully developed in Victorian times.  Like many of the more central parts of Birmingham it also continues to be redeveloped, both housing and industry.  Whenever I visit Birmingham there seems to be another new building that I didn't recognise from before.

 
Quoting selectively, from the BBC:

 
B. Barnham

 

I wondered who would spot the pattern in the naming.  I know nothing of the Jewellery Quarter - often wondered about it purely based on the name and somewhere that sounds like it's worth taking a look.

The map suggests that this is NOT a station obviously ripe for significant extra residential housing.  Do I have that right?

 
H: Habrough

 
J.  Jewellery Quarter.  I was hesitating to post this because I felt I had cheated by looking at a list of stations beginning with the letter J; on the other hand, Graham had kindly chosen to help us by his choice of labels for the maps.

I recommend a visit to the Jewellery Quarter's museums to get an appreciation of British craftsmanship and a realisation that there is still some manufacturing in this country.

 

A major traffic for East-West rail via the Marston Vale line - from the BBC

 
E. Earlsfield.

 
Yes, it IS Cromer [Beach] - formerly the Midland and Great Northern terminal for that seaside town, and it became the only station for that town when the Great Eastern station was closed and their service from Norwich diverted in.  One of very, very few M&GN survivors.  These days, it shares with Battersby and Bere Alston being a reversal point on a branch line, trains carrying on to a new Sheringham stationlet as in that town the service was cut back to allow level crossing closure at that time.

 
From The BBC

 
Certainly fits with a period map (courtesy NLS) and it is very different today.

 
A) The First one is Bounds Green, north London

 
18th March 2026, Bethesda Church Hall, Trowbridge - close to the station.  West Wiltshire Rail User Group AGM.

20th May 2026, same venue.  Public meeting.

In 2026, there's going to be a lot going on and we will have topical transport speakers relating to our current and future railways in West Wiltshire.

Meeting start formally at 19:30, with us gathering to network and have a cup of tea or coffee from around 19:00.  They finish at around 21:00 for "carriages" or trains home - timed for members (and speakers!) who travel by public transport.


Illustration - at the 2025 AGM

 
Public meetings - 12th Mar 2026 (AGM), 9th Jul, 8th Oct

Final venues and speakers to be announced; meetings planned to be early evening after commuter arrivals back into Melksham - typically 18:30 or 19:00 formal start, and will be somewhere in or near the Town Centre.  All welcome..

The Committee meets every 2 months - dates on the front page at https://www.mtug.org.uk - and the group also has key events such as the Carnival, the River and Food Festival, and the Christmas lights in its diary

 
F Falmouth

 
I'm filing this quiz in the "too difficult - not a question to be used again" category.

The walks were / are

Chetnole to Maiden Newton
Freshford to Bath Spa
Spean Bridge to Newtonmore
Mallaig to Kyle of Lochalsh
Matlock to Buxton

I note that Google does not recommend the Two Tunnels route, nor the canal towpath, but rather takes you over the top

 
Our government is planning to provide substantial extra housing around existing infrastructure such as railway stations.  It makes sense rather than building isolated and unconnected communities on fields in the middle of nowhere.  There's more to it than that, though - considerations that it's not wise to build on land that will flood, nor in places so far from anywhere that there's no business  case / prospect of work in reasonable commute distance.  And other services too.  Nor can you really build residences on and where there are already a load of residences unless you're redeveloping tired neighbourhoods or infilling.

Here are 10 maps of random railway stations and there immediate areas, each anonymised.  Which look like they may be candidates for new housing or industry and can you identify where they are?

A.


B.


C.


D.


E.


F.


G.


H.


I.


J.

 
Not many connections between Moreton and Kingham either!

 
From the BBC:

 
Thank you for your detailed and reasoned (as ever) reply, grahame.

Personally, I prefer the Bristol Rail Campaign (FoSBR) AGM to be held in the evening in Bristol. In the days when I was a commuter into Bristol, any daytime meeting would have required me taking a day's annual leave just to attend. Even now, in my retirement, I still have things to do during the day, so an evening in central Bristol for any meeting of a local transport group is appropriate.

I am a long-time supporter of FoSBR and I intend to, erm, attend that meeting on Wednesday 11 March. Not least because that will be my birthday, and it will enable one of my colleagues (of the squirrel variety) to buy me that pint he owes me.

 

Possibly. I'll need to look into my domestic timetabling arrangements here for that Bank Holiday.