It’s been a while since we’ve placed virtual pen on virtual paper and brought an update to you, but September marks the return of our periodical newsletter, The Traffic Circular! This is where we keep you up to date with everything involving the On Our Lines project – news, events and more. You can find the entire archive of past Circulars here, and you can also sign up to receive the newsletter direct to your email inbox here. For those of you on our Discord server, we’ll also post every edition in #public-address as it’s published.
A Message from the Operations Superintendent
Before we get into the bulk of the newsletter I just wanted to pop in a personal thank you to every member of On Our Lines who’s got involved with us over the last few months! We had a bit of a quiet start to the year whilst I worked through some personal challenges, but there was plenty going on behind the scenes and I hope to bring you more news about the future of On Our Lines in the not-so-distant future! My mental health is finally reaching a much brighter and stable place, and I’d particularly like to thank the @Controller and @Signaller team of the server for keeping things running smoothly when I’ve been unable to.
Back in February we ran a hugely successful Transport Race, which was our most well attended event to date! Over 15 teams ventured across London searching out stations, landmarks and more, and you can see how they did here. There’s also a really great video showing Team DadRail’s adventures that day – why not check it out if you’ve wanted to join us but haven’t quite managed to before?
Indeed, you loved the February Race so much that we did it all again on the 28th May – which, once again, became our biggest event yet! Again, all the details are here so do check them out if you want to see what you’re missing!
And, if that wasn’t enough, in July we held our third Race of the year – but this time, we turned the difficulty up to 100 for the Expert Mode! Instead of choosing from curated sets of stations, our intrepid teams chose their stations and landmarks entirely at random, with additional Side Quests and Bonus Points also added in to shake things up. This was a successful trial of a trickier version of the event for our veteran supporters (and to allow me to take part in one too!), and we’ll be running another in the future – watch this space!
For all three events we were blessed with wonderful weather and a relatively disruption-free network, creating a great atmosphere and some friendly rivalry between our teams. We’ll keep putting on these Races for as long as you want to attend them – we’ve got so many great ideas to keep them fresh, and you’re providing us with plenty of ideas too! We’d also love to hear from anyone who might be interested in helping us to run the Races – no experience is necessary, and we can find you a role that is perfectly suited to you!
I’d like to also note my thanks to the team who have helped put on the Races so far: Laurence, Mitchel, Chris, Flick, Casey, Colin and Bekki – you’ve all been superstars. Our next Races, both in London, are taking place on 10th September and 26th November – free tickets are available now via EventBrite.
We also held our belated Christmas(!) gathering on the 18th June, heading out to explore the recently opened central section of the brand new Elizabeth line! We spent some time at each of the stations along the way taking in their scale and many of the impressive features, as well as spotting one or two interesting ‘oversights’ where things aren’t quite there yet! We also visited both of the June Stations of the Month in London (Custom House and Bayswater), as well as taking a trip on the DLR to Lewisham and Southeastern to Abbey Wood before finishing the day with a fast boat ride from Canary Wharf back to Central London! Thanks to everyone who came.
Our next social is taking place on Sunday 4th September, with a distinctly Metropolitan line feel! On Our Metropolitan Line coincides with the operation of the preserved 1938 stock between Amersham, Watford and Harrow, and we’ll be out and about on the Met during the day, before retiring to The Metropolitan Bar at Baker Street after the final trip. We’ll meet on platforms 5 and 6 at Harrow-on-the-Hill after the ’38 stock has detrained and then head into town together - we hope you can join us! Also in the social calendar, On Our SimSig returns on Sunday 18th September, with a chain centred around Westbury power signal box. You can find full details of both events over on Bradshaw.
Finally, it’s great to see to see life returning to a semblance of normality with the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions. It’s important to remember that the pandemic isn’t over yet, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel and things are starting to look brighter. We know it’s been a very difficult few years for most of our community, but we’re really looking forward to finally getting back out and about on the tracks to catch up with faces new and old.
Thank you for all your support.
Charley x
Staffing Changes
There have been a couple of changes to the staffing of the Discord server to better reflect activity levels and the availability of staff volunteers for these roles. Flick (@SharpSpiral#9351) has stepped up to Controller (administrator) level, and Casey (@BipedCroissant8#9479) has stepped down as a Signaller. We’d like to place on record our thanks to Casey for all their support in growing the On Our Lines community over the last year and a half and we look forward to welcoming them back to the team when their other commitments allow.
As a result, the @Signaller (moderator) role has been temporarily retired, and we have no immediate plans to recruit into this role given current activity levels on the server. The staff team now consists of Jarley (@jarley#2168, @Operations Superintendent), Chris (@Thryduulf#8980), Laurence (@laurencec123#3791), Mitchel (@MitchelMor#6969) and Flick (@SharpSpiral#9351) (@Controllers). You can continue to @mention the @Signaller or @Controller roles if you need the attention of the staff team.
Stations of the Month
Our Stations of the Month challenge continues to run, receiving a good number of entries each month. Full details of how the challenge works can be found here, but we’ve rounded up all the entries so far this year below.
If you don’t know how it works, then each month we randomly select one National Rail station from each region of the country, one London Underground / DLR, one light rail/tram and one heritage railway station every month to be the Stations of the Month.
To earn points, just take a selfie at one or more of the Stations of the Month and at the end of the year there will be a prize for the person with the most points in each category - and maybe some bonus prizes too, so be creative with those selfies!
The stations for September have been chosen and are listed below and in the September 2022 Stations of the Month thread in #challenges-on-our-lines, where you should post your pictures. Full details are also on the Stations of the Month page.
The Stations of the Month for September 2022
RailMiles
Our roundup of the On Our LinesRailMiles league is back! Let’s check in and see how the leaderboard is stacking up. As of 2359 on August 31st it’s looking like this:
Discord username
RailMiles username
Points
@laurencec123#3791
laurencec123
25776mi 66ch
@SharpSpiral#9351
Slaffter
21762mi 65ch
@jarley#2168
jcmg
12527mi 74ch
@BipedCroissant8#9479
KcEdwards
11428mi 02ch
@Minion_Josh_#8802
minion_josh_
10221mi 64ch
@casimmons#3091
Girlonrails98
8253mi 42ch
@J_Finney#8905
J_Finney
6167mi 63ch
@penguin#4444
penguin8967
4856mi 25ch
@Lcawte#2212
lcawte
4762mi 00ch
@NickBrunning#8155
Nick_on_Platforms
2633mi 11ch
@deadly#3721
deadly
2489mi 21ch
@gsnedders#1742
gsnedders
2387mi 39ch
Be sure to keep logging your journeys and see how you stack up in our On Our Lines league! Just ping @jarley#2168 if you would like to be added to the league on RailMiles.
You’ve Got Mail?
Want to stay in touch by email? If you'd like to receive future editions of The Traffic Circular by email, you can now sign up to our mailing list here. We’ll send our monthly newsletter straight to your inbox, as well as other occasional emails about upcoming On Our Lines events. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Picture of the Month
We’ve restarted our Picture of the Month competition, where your submissions are in with a chance of adorning our social media channels for the following month! You can enter up to three photos each month – so choose wisely – and our Patreons (@Ticket Holders) and Staff team will then vote on their favourites.
Here’s a round-up of the winning photos from the last few months:
