Is it time for this forum to close

[drico]

No one has posted for a month now is it time for this forum to be shut down ?

[dave1]

Apr 10, 2016 14:50:37 GMT drico said:

No one has posted for a month now is it time for this forum to be shut down ?

I hope not I think it may be a quiet period although I agree something is going on as I see none of the Mods have been on. It will be a shame if it does but only the members can keep it going so lets have some more.

[Nortube]

As a mod, I visit almost every day, usually as part of my "I'll have breakfast and coffee and skim through the news, e-mails and forums" routine  ,  but I don't always have things to say in that short time.

I would prefer the forum to stay open, even if it has only a few occasional posters. Of course, it would be nice to have more posters (and thus a wider input), but that's the way it goes.

One of the problems that I find with posting (and it could be me!) and related issues is that it's not always a quick couple of minutes and so I tend to put things off until "I'll do it later when I have a bit more time". One example is that I've just spent nearly an hour trying to find out information about a little known disused station (only open for three years) that cropped up in regards to the Carto Metro map, so I've had an extended breakfast in the process. All these sorts of things are very interesting, but it's too easy to get sidetracked in the process.

One thing that I've been meaning to do since the posts on the Jubilee line construction a month or so back, was to post some photos of the Jubilee line tunnelling work at London Bridge. However, as that will take a bit of time to dig up the photo CDs etc. that has sort of been put to one side and I keep forgetting about it (now scribbled on a To Do post it note!).

I think that you're right regarding a quiet period. I've seen these happen with other forums etc. It's just that it's more noticeable here because there's only a few posters.

[hellocontrol]

Apr 10, 2016 14:50:37 GMT drico said:

No one has posted for a month now is it time for this forum to be shut down ?

Just because no one posts does not mean it's time to call it a day. We are the forum although it does seem that only certain people post but that happens on every forum and some are just lookers but there are some that don't like certain things being asked and we all know who they are. Yes I have noticed that Nortube is the only Mod to be on here the others seem to be giving it a miss, but you have to remember that the Mods do everything in their own time and they do have a life outside the forum.
I think some members on here came from the other forum but do not want to participate for whatever reason. Some questions can be asked but do not get a reply due to no one knowing the answer but I am sure given time we can build up but it won't be fast. On some forums have you noticed some of the things asked and yet it still thrives but that is the nature of the beast. 

[dreadnought]

Apr 11, 2016 17:13:55 GMT hellocontrol said:

Apr 10, 2016 14:50:37 GMT drico said:

No one has posted for a month now is it time for this forum to be shut down ?

Just because no one posts does not mean it's time to call it a day. We are the forum although it does seem that only certain people post but that happens on every forum and some are just lookers but there are some that don't like certain things being asked and we all know who they are. Yes I have noticed that Nortube is the only Mod to be on here the others seem to be giving it a miss, but you have to remember that the Mods do everything in their own time and they do have a life outside the forum.
I think some members on here came from the other forum but do not want to participate for whatever reason. Some questions can be asked but do not get a reply due to no one knowing the answer but I am sure given time we can build up but it won't be fast. On some forums have you noticed some of the things asked and yet it still thrives but that is the nature of the beast. 

In all honesty, I think you need to ask yourselves why most, including the majority of the forum's own London's Transport Admin staff, can't be bothered to post here. Mods on here are no different to other posters, they're not exactly overworked are they?. I'm a member of Rail UK and also read London Reconnections and the posts there are vibrant and interesting. Here, it's just a vacuum with little of interest to casual viewers other than what appears to be a clique of historical rail employees and even that lineage seems to have ended in rancor. A forum is dead if nobody posts but I'd stop concerning yourselves about other forums (I take it you're referring to Rail UK which has a massive following) and try and work out what is switching visitors off. You have an active membership of perhaps 10 if you're lucky and out of them, half that post. Get some interest going and it'll improve, otherwise, you're dead in the water.

[railtechnician]

Why is it that the vast majority of members are 'sharks', 'lurkers' or whatever the current term may be for sitting on the side for fear of being involved? I have no idea but even though I haven't posted here for some weeks I am always logged in and check for new messages every day.

Who is Dreadnought?, I have no idea and forgive me but I cannot readily recall any previous post that s/he may have made here, for all I know s/he may be a bot. I would say exactly the same thing about 90%+ of the members.

For my part in a few short weeks I will enter my 12th year of retirement and I haven't seen any part of London since the summer of 2006. Thus I know little or nothing of today's Underground except that it seems to be top heavy with managers, lots of pen pushers, policy makers and experts but few if any railwaymen and railwaywomen as it was in the days when passenger service was paramount. I have always felt lucky to have seen the last vestiges of what I regard as the heyday of London Underground before the final nail was driven with the awful but wholly avoidable fire at Kings Cross. By then, successive governments had long lost interest in the railway, in fact public transport in general, and the Underground had been denied the necessary funds to keep it up to date for decades. Many capital projects were cancelled and maintenance also suffered as the politicians played Russian roulette. 'Short termism' is a terrible disease that affects anything and everything in Britain, our politicians being more interested in popularity than that which they are elected to do and it manifests itself in so many ways. Cutting the capital budget, the government grant to LU, year on year saved not a penny of £taxpayers in the long run and arguably made it far more more expensive to repair the years of under investment which the Kings Cross fire highlighted. The PPP was a disaster and that is not hindsight but something I and others, including a former LU Chairman, were saying before 'shadow running' (when the InfraCos were shadowed by the PPP companies prior to PPP implementation) but the government of the day was hell bent upon shifting the 'financial embarassment' that was LU off the books. It didn't save any money, it simply hid the increased £taxpayer expenditure that was necessary to rid the government of the millstone that LU was to become. With the devolution and outsourcing of engineering from the late 1980s prior to the commencement of the PPP there was a decade of make do and mend with £taxpayers millions simply wasted and little to show for it as thousands of man years of knowledge and skills was let go or forced into redundancy and third parties were invited in with lucrative contracts to learn 'on the job' and those of us still with the company having to clean up after them. The upshot of 21st century LU history so far is that it has cost the £taxpayer a lot more modernise LU than it would have done to keep it properly up to date from the 1960s. It is also costing users with ever higher fares, worse services as lines are closed all weekend or earlier in the evening to enable longer engineering hours and little or no impact at all on congestion.
Change for the sake of change seems to have been the mantra for the last few years, no-one really caring about compatibility of rolling stock or signalling systems across the lines, the economies of using common and interchangeable components such that stores can be rationalised, training simplified and many other benefits that come from standardisation such as the simplification of rules, regulations and procedures. There really do seem to be 'too many cooks' pulling the strings spending £taxpayers like there is no tomorrow and yet achieving little in terms of efficiency and true service improvement.
Following the 'tube' in the latest series of TV documentaries I see a corporate organisation but a very disjointed one. It bears little resemblance to the London Underground where I spent almost three decades of my life as a dedicated technician and manager. There are pockets of camaraderie to be seen just as there always were in the days when LU was very much a family oriented occupation and the basic infrastructure hasn't seen an upgrade (discounting the later new lines) since the 1920s Northern line realignment, the tunnels should have been widened to main line gauge decades ago IMHO, it's probably too late now with so much 'London under London'. That said, with the amounts of £taxpayers wasted 'doing up' the old network it might have been better invested in completely new deep level tunnels properly fit for the 21st century and beyond. It is easy to see that despite all the 'improvements' of the last decade or more, the Underground 'as is' is no more fit for purpose now than it was back then and perhaps the investment would be better spent on high speed broadband allowing commuters to stay at home and work instead of fighting their way to the office and home again five days a week!

In the many roles I had at LU I loved my years there but I haven't seen it since 2006 and I doubt I'll ever see it again. I know little or nothing of the technical engineering aspects of the 'modern' railway and prefer to remember LU as it was up to the millennium and for the first few years afterward. Today out of sight is out of mind and the fact that information about the modern railway is not disseminated as it was in the 20th century makes it difficult to maintain an interest in anything except what is rapidly becoming ancient history.

There, something for all the lurkers to take an interest in, argue over and comment upon or not, I suspect the latter based upon past performance. Now I really must return to my other hobbies which are also labours of love but with far more active input most weeks than I have seen here in recent months.

[hangerlanejn]

I too have been retired (since 1996), from what was then (just about) British Rail(ways). The new 'management' seemingly wanted to push out those who had given years of service (and all the expertise that went with that service) in favour of 'new blood'. Although it pains me to say it this short-sightedness may well have contributed to several of the more serious accidents and incidents as records of infrastructure and other matters were lost (and even now I wonder how much knowledge the current incumbents have of that for which they are ultimately responsible). I actually said to my wife after at least two serious accidents that I was glad to be 'out of it' now, and the current political interference with the railways (which were supposed to be at arm's length from the government after privatisation) would not persuade me to return even if I was of an age where this was a possibility.

I now devote my time freely to a well-known steam railway where the pay is nothing at all for ordinary time and even less for overtime, but the satisfaction of a job well done at the day's end is all that one needs.

So far as this Forum is concerned I do visit several times a day when I'm at home but only make an input when I feel I can usefully add to a discussion. That does not mean that I'm not interested in the Forum and I think it should continue, since it provides a more measured debate than one or two other sites (no name, no pack drill).

[hellocontrol]

Apr 14, 2016 22:01:32 GMT dreadnought said:

Apr 11, 2016 17:13:55 GMT hellocontrol said:

Just because no one posts does not mean it's time to call it a day. We are the forum although it does seem that only certain people post but that happens on every forum and some are just lookers but there are some that don't like certain things being asked and we all know who they are. Yes I have noticed that Nortube is the only Mod to be on here the others seem to be giving it a miss, but you have to remember that the Mods do everything in their own time and they do have a life outside the forum.
I think some members on here came from the other forum but do not want to participate for whatever reason. Some questions can be asked but do not get a reply due to no one knowing the answer but I am sure given time we can build up but it won't be fast. On some forums have you noticed some of the things asked and yet it still thrives but that is the nature of the beast. 

In all honesty, I think you need to ask yourselves why most, including the majority of the forum's own London's Transport Admin staff, can't be bothered to post here. Mods on here are no different to other posters, they're not exactly overworked are they?. I'm a member of Rail UK and also read London Reconnections and the posts there are vibrant and interesting. Here, it's just a vacuum with little of interest to casual viewers other than what appears to be a clique of historical rail employees and even that lineage seems to have ended in rancor. A forum is dead if nobody posts but I'd stop concerning yourselves about other forums (I take it you're referring to Rail UK which has a massive following) and try and work out what is switching visitors off. You have an active membership of perhaps 10 if you're lucky and out of them, half that post. Get some interest going and it'll improve, otherwise, you're dead in the water.

Dreadnought you came on here as a visitor, I know this is one of the few forums that I know that allows people to do that but since the start there have been only a few. As you answered why not become a member and help the forum, I was not referring to Rail UK forum but another that most people know. I visit a number of forums but I choose not to become a member of some of them this is due in some cases to the type of questions asked after all we all have our own areas of interest just because it's railway orientated does not mean you have to become a member.

[Jim]

No keep it going, I used to post on DD's forum but have given up on that one as it's now run by knobs so this is my only public transport related info place.