Hello! Welcome to the first edition of The Traffic Circular! This is where the Discord staff team will provide updates about the community, advise of any upcoming events, keep you updated on the latest server news, where to go to talk about certain topics in threads (rather than channels)... and other bits and bobs. You can expect The Traffic Circular to be released every month - the link will be posted in #public-address on our Discord server, and you'll also be able to find the whole archive on this wiki.
All Signallers and Controllers will have some input... and we want you to get involved, too! Drop your feedback and ideas into the thread in #feedback-and-suggestions - and, if you want to, your birthdays for the next month too (but only if you want others to know)!
Discord Server Boosting - Level 3!
Through a combination of your support and a change to how Discord's 'Server Boost' function works, we are now a Level Three server! 🥳 We're incredibly grateful to all of our @Train Maintainers for their continued support of the server.
What does Level Three mean? Well, in addition to all the shiny perks we already had - such as an animated server icon, server banner and more, we're able to expand our incredible collection of custom emoji (thanks, Arturs (@arturs#0001)!) and we also now have a shiny 'vanity' URL for the server - in addition to using discord.onourlines.co.uk, you can now use the very short and very simple discord.gg/bSYHkpFBhU to invite your friends. It's super dope! 100MB uploads are also available to all members, so keep those incredible transport photos and videos coming (and there's more on that later...).
Tips and Tricks
If there are particular things that you're really not interested in, you're welcome to mute these channels - and it's easy to do! If you're on a desktop or laptop, you can right click the channel in particular and click 'Mute Channel', selecting how long you want to mute said channel for. On your mobile device, you simply press and hold the channel you want to mute, and select 'Mute Channel'. This way, you don’t have to get notified of things that don’t interest you!
Do you have a topic that you would like to have a proper discussion about? Why not create a thread in the relevant channel! It's really simple, too. Just click or tap the # icon in the channel name banner at the top, and select 'Create Thread'. This works on all platforms, including mobiles, tablets, laptops, desktops and the web app.
Threads get archived after a period of inactivity. You can still find them them by clicking or tapping the # icon and choosing the 'Archived' tab. Sending a new message in an archived thread will unarchive it for everyone.
Getting too many (or too few) notifications from threads or channels? Don't worry, just right click on or long press the name of the thread/channel, choose 'notification settings' from the menu and select which option suits your preference.
You'll notice the staff will be creating a few threads, and we'll plug certain ones occasionally in The Traffic Circular. We definitely haven’t been doing that already... 👀
Bradshaw
If this is your first visit to this wiki, welcome! We already have a huge range of information on here - about On Our Lines, our SimSig games and the community in general. There are glossaries for a range of transport terminology, too, as well as joke dictionaries (notably Jishlish). We're also expanding specialist pages for some of the lesser-known areas of the transport world, with huge thanks to Amir (@goldenarrow#8573) in particular for creating detailed and accessible histories of many of London Transport’s erstwhile signal cabins.
Bradshaw can be edited by any of our members very easily (it uses the same software as Wikipedia) and we encourage you to do so! There are help pages, places to experiment and, as it's a wiki, there is nothing you can do that can't be fixed if you get it wrong or just doesn't work as you want. If you have questions about how to do something on the wiki, then you can do worse than ask Chris M (@Thryduulf#8980).
Now we've got The Traffic Circular up and running, you'll find the current edition and all historic editions at Bradshaw:The Traffic Circular.
Meet the Staff
Certainly for the first few editions of The Traffic Circular, we'll be running through a brief introduction to the staff - the @Operations Superintendent, @Controller and @Signaller grades.
If you're wondering why some people have coloured names where others don't, that’s related to the roles that they have. Not all are staff - only the above colours on a person's server name indicates they have a staff role (other colours indicate non-staff roles like Patreon supporter). If you don't know what a role or colour does or means, you can have a quick look in #the-rule-book, where each role is explained. (While we're guiding you there, we thought we'd remind you that this is where the rules of the server live... obviously... and if you do break any of them, someone in the admin team will let you know.)
Our first introduction is Jarley (@jcmgio#2168) AKA '@the ten amongst these threes' - the @Operations Superintendent, leader of On Our Lines, signaller extraordinaire (as seen on TV), and general railway (specifically London Underground) aficionado (and not at all a railway influencer). Over to you, Jarley...
Jarley onboard an LNER service
Hi! 👋🏼 I'm Jarley (she/her), the brains behind On Our Lines and perennial annoyance to all in the Discord community. I'm sure many of you know me already, but it never hurts to give a small re-introduction for some of the newer faces around the block. I'm a life-long transport geek with particular interest in tramways and the Underground, but to be completely honest with you I’m happiest when I'm on a train (or tram!), exploring the tracks, seeing new places and meeting new people. There's a certain je ne sais quoi about rail travel, and it's this feeling - and, I suppose, passion - which led to the creation of On Our Lines! It’s been a fascinating ride so far, and I’m really excited to see what else happens as we forge forwards with everything that OOL has on offer.
It's become a bit of a cliché in recent years, but I'm very much a 'railways' person and not a 'trains' person - you can't have the former without the latter, but it's the whole picture - people, places, trains, stations and more - that makes our lines so special. That said, I do have some favourites, as well as some stand out memories: arguably my 'favourite' mainline locomotive is 67 027 'Charlotte', frequently found working Network Rail’s Infrastructure Monitoring, or 'test', trains, and I was lucky enough to have a trip out behind the locomotive back in 2019. That said, perhaps the all-round 'crown' as to go to London Underground's preserved Metropolitan Railway electric locomotive L12, 'Sarah Siddons', which forms one of my earliest and strongest railway memories, from the 2000 Steam on the Met event at Watford station... but you’ll have to wait a bit longer for the details! Talking of stations, I think one of my favourites I've visited so far has to be the iconic London St. Pancras - contrasting sharply with perhaps my least favourite, the basic and uninspiring halt at South Bank near Middlesbrough.
And that, I suppose, is the point of On Our Lines: it's not just about the train travel - it's about the very existence of railways - the where, the what, the why - and about getting out and about and seeing places I would otherwise have absolutely no excuse to visit. So far, it's been wonderful - and I'm sure I'll see you out and about soon On Our Lines!
Staffing Changes
You may have noticed some changes to the Discord staff recently; Romilly, Simon, Tom, Ela and ChrisJ have all stood down for various reasons and we thank them for their service to the server and community. Thryduulf (Chris) has stepped up from Signaller to Controller, whilst Casey and Charlie have both joined the staff team as Signallers.
Your staff team is now Jarley (@jcmgio#2168, @Operations Superintendent); Arturs (@arturs#0001), Chris M (@Thryduulf#8980), Laurence (@laurencec123#3791) and Mitchel (@MitchelMor#6969) (@Controllers); Casey (@BipedCroissant8#0629) and Charlie (@TramwayGay#0648) (@Signallers).
RailMiles
The RailMiles league is gaining more traction as our leaderboard gets bigger and bigger.
For those who don't know what RailMiles is, it is a very niche website for rail enthusiasts who want to compile information about their train journeys, unit or loco numbers and see how many miles they accumulate in the year. This subscription service is provided by @swlines#4808, who also owns and runs the Real Time Trains website. See http://www.railmiles.me/ for more info. (This is not a sponsored or advertising post, we promise!).
Currently, we see @laurencec123#3791 is out in first place with 23,730 miles 34 chains; second place is @notmuchgubbins#6686 with 20,426mi 66ch; and bringing up the rear in third place is @jcmgio#2168 with 15,489mi 41ch.
Keep on adding your journeys and see how you stack up in our On Our Lines league. Ask @jcmgio#2168 to be added to the On Our Lines RailMiles league if you are not already in it.
Coming soon, we will also be having monthly challenges with different themes designed so that those who can only travel less frequently can compete with those who pile on the miles commuting or working on the railway. Stay tuned for details!
Stations of the Month
Starting in October, we are randomly selecting 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 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 October have been chosen and are listed in the October 2021 Stations of the Month thread in #challenges-on-our-lines, where you should post your pictures. Full details are on the Stations of the Month page here.
This train is for Battersea Power Station station
London Underground opened the Northern line extension to Battersea Power Station station on 20th September, with a number of the community heading out to ride on the first trains. It's the first major extension of the London Underground this century, and a pretty significant event. Were you there? Let us know your thoughts and views!
London's Transport Race
London's Transport Race is, as the name suggests, a race around London's transport network - with no running allowed! Teams of two or three will be given a set of six TfL stations, one each in Travelcard Zones 1-6, to visit over the course of the day, with additional bonus challenges to give extra points.
Jarley, with assistance from others, organised and ran an edition of this in July that was such good fun that we did it again on 2nd October. This was also a success so we're going to do it again in December. The exact date hasn't been finalised yet, but all the details you need to know will be on the London's Transport Race page and in the #londons-transport-race channel, where you will also be able to ask questions and chat to past and future contestants. You can also read about the July and October events there.
Invite your friends as this is an event with nearly limitless capacity and, as they say, the more the merrier! For those of you who do vlogs, please don’t forget to bring your cameras as we’d love to see how your day goes.
We look forward to seeing you there!
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, just let us know. Send an email to [email protected] and if there is interest we'll set it up in time for November's issue.
Picture of the Month
The last segment of The Traffic Circular will always be the Picture of the Month. Each month, we will be featuring a particularly good photograph taken by a server member of something relevant to UK Railways and/or the On Our Lines community. If you have one that you think is good enough then put it in the ”Picture of the Month” thread in #challenges-on-our-lines with a short description. To keep things fair though we will only consider up to three submissions per person - if you submit more we’ll just ignore all but your first three, so choose wisely. The deadline for submitting photos will be the 21st of the month. The winner will be chosen by a vote of our Patreon supporters and the Discord staff team, who will have a week to vote on their favourite... which will then be published in the next edition of The Traffic Circular.
As a one-off inaugural special, The Traffic Circular offered On Our Lines leader Jarley the chance to showcase a recent photograph of theirs. She’s definitely stretched the definition of 'recent', but she chose a snap from the first ever On Our Lines event back in August 2020... Is Temple Open? A small, intrepid band of community members headed out to Temple station on London’s Underground network, and had a light-hearted photoshoot to celebrate the re-opening of the station following an extended closure during the first Covid-19 lockdown. The station has attracted a cult following from London Underground staff and enthusiasts due to frequent closures over the last few years, particularly following the 'Fit for the Future' programme of 2015-2017. We've got plenty more ideas for fun events like this in the pipeline, so keep an eye out on the server for one near you soon...
Temple is open
Credits
Written and edited by Chris M (@Thryduulf#8980), Jarley (@jcmgio#2168), and Laurence (@laurencec123#3791).
Photo of the month by Jarley (@jcmgio#2168). Photo of Jarley and other graphics by Arturs (@arturs#0001).
With thanks to Chris J.
