It's a bit like the Melksham Train Service.  15 years ago, the facility supplied by default was broken, and we were left without any useable search. I have worked to provide something and make it extendable useable, but there is a lot more to be done and users need to be aware and work with the limitations at present.   There is a lot more that could be done .. recall 3000 journeys a year past ... 75,000 journeys a year pre-covid peak, 400,000 journeys a year that is should be for the size and shape of the town.  And a huge "thank you" and no criticism for the people who have helped the rise from 3k to 75k, whilst being reminded there is still work to be done.

 

I have added a copy of the above post here, in this general guidance for the use of the Coffee Shop forum's search facility.

Personally, I hate our forum 'search' facility with a passion: that's why I spend time moving and merging existing topics wherever possible - to avoid the need to 'search'.

That is in no way any criticism of grahame: he has done a brilliant job, working to improve upon the software restrictions this forum uses.

 

Added
December 2023 - http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/nrtt_202312/

 
An update from my blog - http://grahamellis.uk/blog1052.html - "Melksham needs appropiate "Siftware"" ... looking at the issues managing and finding data in the town.  I have include Coffee Shop stats ...

 

We have some

May 2019 - http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/nr_timetables
December 2019 - http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/nrtt20
May 2020 - http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/nrtt20summer
May 2021 - http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/nrtt21summer
December 2021 - http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/nrt_dec21
December 2022 - http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/nrtt1222
May 2023 - http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/nrtt_may23


Edited to add these other places you could try:
https://timetableworld.com
https://www.railtables.co.uk/all-services/
https://britishrailwaybooks.co.uk/wtt/wtt.php
https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C13103
https://www.dpsimulation.org.uk/timetables.html

 
can previous copies of the Nathional rail timetable be published/shown/downloaded?

 
We now have over 1,900 documents in our archive of which 1,075 searchable indexed documents. Most of these are available to members only, but just under 150 are available in public where we are clear there's public interest and no copyright concerns. We also have 25,000 threads with over 335,000 individual posted contributions - and the vast majority of those ARE public.

Just this morning I have added three documents:

http://www.passenger.chat/NN_at_announcement.pdf - "Network North" as it was announced by the Prime Minister on 3rd October

http://www.passenger.chat/NN_20231008.pdf - "Network North" as it was updated on 4th October

http://www.passenger.chat/hs2program_20231001.pdf - A recent (but pre-changes) description of HS2 and the various phases from "HS2" themselves.

Anyone can access the public (white list) documents via http://www.passenger.chat/whitelist.html ; they are categorised by importance though and it's not always easy to find what you want.  Indeed a great deal of work could usefully be done to make the entire archive easier to use.

If you want to search for something, the "deep search" box and button at the top of forum pages is a good place to start, as is http://www.passenger.chat/research.html - if you are a member, log in first and you'll then be able to view the documents you find.

Note that some resources are left out of default searches.  If you want to go back to forum threads prior to 2019, the "Dated" option lets you add in a seach right back to our foundation in 2007, and if you want to look in the documents in our archives but not yet indexed, use the "Report on" option and select "All Resources".

Coverage in our archive is patchy as documents need to be added when they crop up, and it's something of a personal project. However, I try to make it useful by adding things as I see them crop up. Many are never accessed at all - but at least we have backup copies should the original resource get lost or changed.

* Please let me know / send me a copy or link of documents you feel are missing - even if I have them, you might be helping me with poor indexing

* Some documents we have are locked .pdf files and that has made it impractical for us to extract the textual content to search

 
We have now reach 1000 indexed documents in our .pdf library, with another 1000 or do still to be indexed.

      1 document dated 1845
      1 dated 1855
      1 1874
      1 1907
      1 1928
      1 1931
      1 1941
      1 1953
      1 1955
      2 1957
      2 1960
      4 1963
      2 1964
      3 1965
      1 1979
      2 1981
      1 1982
      1 1983
      2 1984
      2 1987
      1 1988
      1 1989
      1 1990
      1 1991
      3 1992
      1 1993
      2 1996
      3 2002
      1 2003
      4 2004
      4 2005
     11 2006
      4 2007
     61 2008
     21 2009
     19 2010
     26 2011
     21 2012
     57 2013
     61 2014
     72 2015
     91 2016
     77 2017
    107 2018
     81 2019
    104 2020
    107 2021
     27 2022

Indexed documents accesible to members are categoried as follows
    324 3 - of local interest
    355 5 - General documents
    214 7 - Important documents
     48 9 - Key documents
with the remaining documents being only accessible to admins, largely for copyright reasons.  110 of the documents included in the counts above are "whitelisted" so that they are available to the public even without an account.

 
An update - Deep Search now defaults to reporting the resource with the most hits first rather than sorting by date. This is what the small print has always told you the default is, but it hasn't actually done that.  The issue came to light when I was adding the Bristol to Birmingham report in this morning.

Try entering Bristol*Birmingham into the Deep Search box - you should find the resource that I added this morning high up the list now, with 85 mentions!

 
( Earlier discussions at http://www.passenger.chat/24635 )

There are now 2,000 documents in the Coffee Shop's archive collection, of which 900 can be found through a default search using the forum's deep search facility at http://www.passenger.chat/research.html and also accessible from the box near the top of forum pages. Location shown in greeh here:



Default searches will also find matches within public forum posts which are less that three years old (there are some 50,000 posts that are searched) and stations who's names match (from 2,500 National Rail stations)

---

* A further 900 of the archived documents can be found if you select to report on "All resources (including archive)"; the final 200 documents are stored in various conditions awaiting attention.

* If you wish to look back to earlier forum threads, there's a option on the search page ( http://www.passenger.chat/research.html ) that lets you look into all public posts since the forum started in 2007

---

There are copyright issues with archived documents, and rather than make the content of them public ("publish them") ourselves, most of them are accessible to members only . If you are a guest, please remember that registration doesn't cost anything and if you have a public / sustainable transport interest with a significant UK element, you'll be welcome.

Around 100 documents in our archive are "whitelist"ed, and those are available to guests without registration as well as to members. These documents are listed at http://www.passenger.chat/whitelist.html

---

If you feel that our archive is missing a key document, please let me know - chosing what's in there is somewhat subjective and there will be things I have missed (and probably things included that you will wonder "why?"). All documents are stored as .pdfs - if necessary, other formats such as .doc and .html can be "printed" to .pdf and archived in that way, but with some formats and security features that might not be practical.  Spread sheets in particular can be awkward to 'reduce' to printable documents.

 
Thank you

 

Click on the "+" to the left of the result you have quoted above and it will take you to the thread. If you look in the  top bar above the thread when you're there, you'll see which board it is on.

 
I have used this to find the Lorry Driver Shortage Thread.  I found the name of the thread.  It tells me this. 


Unfortunately I still have no idea which board it is on.  How can I find out?