Future of the board

[Fleet Lists]

Yes at the peak we had over 200 posts per day but over January/February this year we averaged just over 36 posts a day. So far in March we are averaging right on 38.

I get the figures daily at 4pm so March finished about 2 hours ago. Today was the highest post count for ages ie 78 which took the daily average for the month up to 40.16.

Coronavirus has helped boost things a bit, together with the discussion on the proposed Adelaide changes. Sydney which used to be our peak state, has been very quiet,

[Fleet Lists]

Today is the last day of April so at 4pm I again finalised the month's statistics. It started off great on April Fools day with no less than 80 but it has been downhill ever since then with one 24 hour hour period only having 11 edits resulting in a daily average of just 35.4 posts for the month.

It must start to raise the question as to how much longer it is going to be worth for the Admins to keep working on the board when there is now so little activity.

[Merc1107]

At least until I decided to take a FB vacation some time ago, I noticed a number of the enthusiast's groups I am a member of seem to have diminishing activity as a whole - this was before the COVID-19 situation so it cannot be blamed on that. It seems perhaps activity is moving to whatever social media site is popular this week.

To me, it would be a great shame if further splintering and segmentation among enthusiast groups is occurring as a result of more people sharing their photos or discussion on yet another closed-off, members-only platform. The great thing about ATDB is the wealth of knowledge still available in old posts that are easily searched for. I've never had much luck with FB searches, and there's only so far one can scroll on that damn joke of a site before the JavaSludge grinds your computer to a complete halt. Unfortunately, I think restrictions on what can and cannot be shared on social media would put a dampener on any future increase in activity here - but then, if you have to hide it in a private group on another social media platform... Perhaps it shouldn't be shared at all?

Aside from having to resize photos to fit the board's requirements, there's not a whole lot else wrong with this place. If folks aren't interested in a place where it is possible to easily discuss relevant topics, then that's really quite disappointing.

[Centralian]

Agree entirely with Merc 1107. It would be a tragedy to see this site cease, but without the support of the bus enthusiasts out there it will.
I'm saddened to see that many 'names' in the enthusiast community don't post here anymore, or do so once in the blue moon.
I'm sure there are probably a lot of readers (don't know if those figures can be captured) but not many appear to be willing to share. Why ?
And I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of those monthly numbers come from the Lunch Room ( split between people having the S&#t's about something or being happy about other things ).

We seem to have created a lot of 'secret societies' through Facebook, locking away our photos, information for the select few that are admitted.
How does a young enthusiast getting interested in the hobby progress. Some make perhaps silly comments on here, and the 'die hards' criticise or leave, preferring a more 'mature' conversation in private.

It's a broad bus enthusiast community that we had on here, all ages, all levels of maturity and exposure to the hobby, the industry, and to life. I haven't come across anything that compares in this area of interest.
How many Facebook sites does one need to belong to and constantly scan to get the same level of information or opinion.
The wealth of information that was shared on here was amazing and is still stored and can be searched, as mentioned earlier.
Are the Fleet Lists a part of this site, because that would be another tragic loss if they ceased being updated and managed.

If those with 'seniority' in the bus enthusiast community can't be bothered anymore, it's not a good sign for the future of ATDB.
I personally won't touch Facebook, for various reasons that I strongly believe in. We're all a bit strange in our own way, comes with the hobby.

What is missing and always has, is a history page on the site. Look at what Looselion achieved with the history of Redline. Photo's, information etc.
I'm sure that would bring back some interest, if not too late.

[Bus Suggestions]

Personally, I think the lack of activity on this discussion board could be associated with the 'oldies' times passing. Whether as a result of inactivity, memory, or their unfortunate passing is beyond my knowledge. It is a shame that we no longer have photo threads with 'blasts from the past,' or big long 'history of x' threads that came courtesy of these people. And maybe something with recent, potentially unresolvable errors could contribute to users finding the board more ‘unfriendly’ than a time ago. Perhaps when us newbies' time has come, we'll be able to share our own mimics to revive the board, albeit 50 years too late.

Which brings me to a second point - perhaps there is no new community willing to take on the task, the hobby we so passionately spend our times with. There is no 'reaching out,' no advertising for this community beyond Google searches. Nobody is so willing to 'take the helm' either. And in the culture of today, people are always more inclined to using the car, with the bus becoming more of a secondary transport option/reserve for the 'lower-class' rather than an interest. Nobody finds transport enthusiasm as something ‘cool’ anymore. Bus enthusiasm nowadays is really just portrayed by the stereotype of old guys working on an AEC Regal in a shed somewhere. In time, I’m sure there’ll be a new transport community, but that may be too late for this forum.

Third point – all the discussion in the ‘main’ transport scene nowadays is always about the ‘big things.’ The big, advertised infrastructure projects such as Dandenong Skyrail, Forrestfield-Airport Link, Sydney Metro etc. There is no real basis on the ‘little’ things, the fleet details, fleet lists or company history anymore. Only a small portion of people really care that TP2871 just entered service, most just care that the FAL will open on time. No longer is there a lot of transparency in corporate, transparency in government to allow such details to be released. As a result, nobody really notices those details. All people see now is ‘new bus vs old bus,’ rather than ‘Merc O405NH vs Volvo B8RLE.’

Yes, a role is played in the diminishing of this forum by private ‘splinter’ groups being formed and others moving to new forums, but there are many semi-uncontrollable external forces such as culture and bringing up that play a larger role in the diminishing of this community. And it isn’t always moving to alternatives that diminishes the community. Just look at other forums: SkyscraperCity is always a bustling hive, but nowadays, Railpage is basically the equivalent to a digital ghost town.

I praise the iron will of the admin and moderator team, notably nowadays Fleet Lists and The Phonj, for keeping this forum alive at whatever costs. Although the times may be coming to an end, it wouldn’t be too late to say thank you to this wonderful team. Thank you for what you have provided. That being said, I hope one could bring his/her friends into the transport community to help fuel the ATDB. Shouldn’t hurt much, though I’d recommend staying 1.5 metres away from each other for the time being.

EDIT: I suppose, maybe, there is also a move into a culture where people propose new ideas, rather than discuss the old. So heritage is no longer a part of 'new' culture, as there is new movement into new ideas. Perhaps having the Armchair Operators sub-forum listed publicly would attract more attention and more activity onto this board.

[Geo101]

I praise the iron will of the admin and moderator team, notably nowadays Fleet Lists and The Phonj, for keeping this forum alive at whatever costs.

I confess that I am one of the silent members and only a new one at that!! My statistics will surely show that.

My background in public transportation is pretty much that I spend a lot of time travelling on trains and busses, having disposed of my last (and perhaps final) personal car circa 2006. When I'm at work, admittedly before the COVID-19 kicked in and killed the entertainment/events industry, I used to catch PT to work, including night ride busses, and do appreciate how good the PT system in Sydney is.

I cringe when I read mainstream media about public transport, which I also do whilst being chauffeured around town.

I'm one of those passengers that spend most of my trips (or was that journeys?) glued to my iPad, and I must say that logging into the ATDB forum gives me great pleasure and some insight into what happens behind the scenes.

It would be a great disappointment to me if the site was to close.

In saying that, I do understand that moderating, managing, etc would surely take a lot of rewardless effort and ongoing time and financial resources.

Anyhow, I think I'm now up to post 125 (0.06 posts per day / 0.01% of all posts) !!!

[BanksfielderIdiot823]

It reminds me of the common phrase of "millennials are killing xyz.", but replace 'millennials' with 'Facebook'. Centralian mentioned about those 'secret societies' on Facebook, which both Facebook and those societies I will largely blame for the lack of information nowadays, and that is one of many reasons why I will also never give Mark Zuckerberg and his cohorts the light of day.

There could be also another load of reasons why the activity has dropped. As Fleet Lists mentioned, the activity was on a high on the 1st of April, but had a pretty big drop as the month went on. Maybe with the only thing that was talked about being COVID-19 and everyone else who would've otherwise been bus-spotting being told to hunker down and remain at home; there just has not been any outdoor activity, no one around to see what's going on and as a result, nothing much to talk about. That's running top of my mind right now nearly a month later since I've completely missed the bustitution on the Banko last weekend.

Another could be because of some battles or debates out of frustration and 'holier than thou' opinions around the Lunch Room section in particular. With discussions around society in 2020, there just tends to be no grey-zone anymore; 'It's my way or the highway', if you're brave enough to have a differing opinion to some matters, the people who are strong in opposition will drop the anchors on you. The very thing that's happening elsewhere on the internet.

And a third could be because in many areas in the big cities; the days of a more diverse bus fleet are long gone; some areas only have one type of bus, some are trying to push along with whatever the USA and Europe are doing and go for electric buses, and the fun that came with playing around with the different variety of buses from the one depot doesn't exist anymore. That can also go for liveries; considering that bus interchanges were a lot more colourful back then with operators having their own colour schemes, but now thanks to uniformed state liveries, everything looks the same, and it's the same boring thing now. This is where the saying 'you can never have too much of a good thing' comes into play. Since everything is about the same sight every time, it gets boring, and bustitutions then become big dots on the calendar, since that's the only time that some kind of foreign colour gets reintroduced to the bus interchange. Unfortunately, since uniform liveries are determined by the respective state government involved, we can't really do much about it. However, we could go right back to the photoshopping that we used to do and make some fun out of it. Those would be my three suspicions.

However if it makes it any better, I can say with absolute certainty that this forum has played an important part in not just my bus-fanning activity, but others as well. It would at times be the catalyst of a pilgrimage of enthusiasts to a particular area to witness a rare activity of a particular bus, or a helping hand for someone looking for another particular bus. Even prospective bus drivers would look at it to get themselves familiar with the industry before they join. Fleet Lists, The Phonj, Daniel, busrider and the whole load of moderators out there have such a big, thankless job on their hands keeping this forum altogether, and by extension the fleet list section itself which serves absolute wonders, and we should be grateful for the efforts they have given. It would be upsetting to see this board fold like others have and I don't want it to be a case of Deja Vu; I mean, I had been a former member of two other boards which have collapsed; one made a complete exodus to Facebook, and the other had feuds between users and admins that got really ugly.

This one saying that I thought of some time ago reminds me of the importance of the bus enthusiast community: "Every bus has its own story". Yes, even the newest buses. Each bus may have its own parts and mechanics, but always has its own VIN. Each bus has its own kilometre reading on its odometer. Each bus has its own build date. Buses are sort of like us people; We went to school and/or work. When Yr 6/Yr 12 finishes, or if the company unfortunately folds, we all go our separate ways. Buses mainly are ordered nowadays by bulk for an operator and once they hit retirement age they all branch off into their own journeys. Though yet, there would always be that one bus or couple of buses that we grow such a strong attachment to. So if we still have that love for the hobby, we need to try to find some enjoyment in it; particularly in the time now with this pandemic at hand. As for the amount of activity on the site, hopefully the pandemic rears its ugly head soon and we should see it pick back up again in the days afterwards. There's been too much negative around the nation and the world; let's try to think some positive.

By the way, I would very much support the idea from Bus Suggestions about the 'Armchair Operators' sub-forum being publicly listed. Bring the ideas in, get people thinking, get a whole different load of discussions rolling in.

[Fleet Lists]

By the way, I would very much support the idea from Bus Suggestions about the 'Armchair Operators' sub-forum being publicly listed. Bring the ideas in, get people thinking, get a whole different load of discussions rolling in.

I am not sure what that means - I thought it was publicly listed in the Miscellaneous section.

[BanksfielderIdiot823]

I am not sure what that means - I thought it was publicly listed in the Miscellaneous section.

Nah mate, only visible to us members.

This is what the Miscellaneous section looks like while we're logged off

[Fleet Lists]

Thanks I was not aware of that. We should get someone to look at that as I dont know about that sort of thing

[ScaniaGrenda]

I agree with some of the points here mentioned by other forum members, particularly BanksfielderIdiot823.

A lot of the fun for enthusiasts is drying up sadly because there's nothing exciting or interesting happening anymore, the old buses & trains we knew and once loved are hitting retirement age, being taken off the roads (or rail) and replaced with newer things that may not be exciting to enthusiasts. I haven't put how close the submission dates are together but I do recall looking through the NSW Photos section over time in the past and a lot of the older photos featured your STA Mercedes MKII - MK V PMC Buses or other High-floors and a lot of the members would aww over them & most of the submissions would receive some amount of posts from other members whether that'll be from how they enjoyed the photos or how they enjoyed seeing the submissions of older buses. Unless your still somewhere in Sydney, finding & riding High-floors on service routes is becoming a thing of the past outside of rail replacement / on a charter.

Another point I feel the need to mention is the uniqueness, From who knows when in time to 2010, Operators were still using their own livery on their fleet, Now the majority of newer vehicles (with some exceptions) are done up in the state mandated transport livery which after you've seen it on 30 other similar looking buses doesn't leave much room for character or presentation and can get very tasteless. When you start seeing the same things over and over again, it's just going to be very hard to be enthusiastic about it. You might get excited over it being a new shiny thing but with all things in life it isn't going to be shiny & new forever.

I think some of us here enjoy seeing the rareness of things when their shown off or posted, whether that'll include buses that had very few productions (either body or chassis or both), older liveries or whatever, their quickly drying up as well. Looking at the ATDB fleetlist a while back I noted that there's only two buses left in the entire CDC fleet that still have the older Westbus livery applied to them, the same other buses that had that livery got done up into canary yellow years ago or jumped straight to TNSW livery. I won't name an approx year but when I was shy of finishing High school there was still plenty of buses featuring the Westbus livery. Once these rareness factors go all we have to look back on is memories, there's no more chasing to see said buses in action because as mentioned they get their livery changed or get retired / sold off etc.

Whether I'm wrong on this or not, some of us treat this like any other hobby and we enjoy it, have our time with it and one day we either move on from it or become busy with our lives that we simply don't get back to it. I'd say this could be somewhat the case for younger enthusiasts where the only time they'll be able to focus on their transport hobby is either after school or the weekend. On the weekend your not going to see a lot of the usual activity you would get on the weekday as operators don't tend to use their aging vehicles or high-floors on weekends and if your primary focus is on those two then I can see it getting bland very quickly for you.

I enjoy my time on this board discussing transport matters with other board members, I can't say for certain but between me and another board member who possibly still resides in this region, we're probably only the few still active members on here from our area, the rest haven't had activity on here in years & it's unknown if their still into public transport or had their time and moved on.

I do try and get into the observation threads where I can but one I personally had to have been there to observe it and two I just don't get the free time anymore like I use too. With COVID-19 it hasn't helped much either as I've been following the directions the state government has issued and staying home & only going out to the shops and back home, even if COVID wasn't a thing I doubt anything interesting would be happening as down here it seems like we have it pretty good with 90 - 95% smooth sailing. If I find out that an operator in my area has obtained a bus and it isn't been reported or I'm not sure of something I observed, I'll probably post it in the observation thread. Until then I'll just come here and see what's new.

[Fleet Lists]

Thanks I was not aware of that. We should get someone to look at that as I dont know about that sort of thing

It appears that when the section was first created it was deliberately decided not to show those articles publicly. I have raised this with other Admins to see whether we should now reverse such a decision.

[Lt. Commander Data]

I disagree - there are no more or less enthusiasts than there ever have been from what I’ve seen

I am active in Facebook groups, and semi-active here. I agree there has been a huge migration in users to Facebook, but they’re definitely still there

I note everyone saying that “there is nothing to be interested in anymore” is from Sydney. Note Australia has a lot more land, people, and buses throughout the rest of the country - maybe it’s time to look at them

I would be sad to see this board die; even while I don’t post often, I spend a fair amount of time reading through past thread and viewing photos from the past. It’s interesting to see what the thoughts and opinions of enthusiasts at a certain period of time was, and a discussion bird represents it fairly well

[Merc1107]

I note everyone saying that “there is nothing to be interested in anymore” is from Sydney. Note Australia has a lot more land, people, and buses throughout the rest of the country - maybe it’s time to look at them

This is so very true. Fleet homogenisation is an ongoing cause for dismay across many transport-related hobbies; although from my perspective, the days of one-off, oddball buses are far from over.

Every town or city with any sort of bus operation has some history behind it, and so much can be learned on the internet. Old Government documents; reports, petitions, Minister's Statements can go a long way to shedding light on things, for example. Videos and photos are available, but not for everything (e.g. I'd love to see photos or videos of our Southern busway in operation before the train replaced it! If it were an O-Bahn someone probably would've documented it )

[Campbelltown busboy]

A lot of the fun for enthusiasts is drying up sadly because there's nothing exciting or interesting happening anymore, the old buses & trains we knew and once loved are hitting retirement age, being taken off the roads (or rail) and replaced with newer things that may not be exciting to enthusiasts. I haven't put how close the submission dates are together but I do recall looking through the NSW Photos section over time in the past and a lot of the older photos featured your STA Mercedes MKII - MK V PMC Buses or other High-floors and a lot of the members would aww over them & most of the submissions would receive some amount of posts from other members whether that'll be from how they enjoyed the photos or how they enjoyed seeing the submissions of older buses. Unless your still somewhere in Sydney, finding & riding High-floors on service routes is becoming a thing of the past outside of rail replacement / on a charter.

Another point I feel the need to mention is the uniqueness, From who knows when in time to 2010, Operators were still using their own livery on their fleet, Now the majority of newer vehicles (with some exceptions) are done up in the state mandated transport livery which after you've seen it on 30 other similar looking buses doesn't leave much room for character or presentation and can get very tasteless. When you start seeing the same things over and over again, it's just going to be very hard to be enthusiastic about it. You might get excited over it being a new shiny thing but with all things in life it isn't going to be shiny & new forever.

If this board is still around in 50 years older members will be reminiscing about things like non air conditioned high floor buses non air conditioned trains and diesel powered buses and trains as everything will be bio diesel regional rail and electric buses

[Fleet Lists]

No, in 50 years time they would be reminiscing about things we have not even thought of yet, but would be out of date by then, or else about things like the Metro and Light Rail which will be totally out of date in 50 years time.

[Campbelltown busboy]

No, in 50 years time they would be reminiscing about things we have not even thought of yet, but would be out of date by then, or else about things like the Metro and Light Rail which will be totally out of date in 50 years time.

Me and this board might be around in 50 years if I do make it to 2070 I would be 83 and I would have been a member of the board for over 50 years so I would be telling all the young members about the light rail the metro and all the other out of date things of the transport system in 2070 Sydney. At the same time I would be telling those young members about the past

[J_Busworth]

The ATDB will always be very important to me, and I have enjoyed everything that I have got out of it over the nearly 4 years I have been around. The two admins regularly on the Sydney forum, Fleet Lists and Daniel, do an absolutely excellent job of maintaining order and keeping things running.

The forums have slowly got less and less busy over the time I've been around. There used to be a new STA Observations thread every month, now the yearly STA observations thread would be lucky to get a few posts each month. At least from a Sydney perspective, the Light Rail thread has been the one where I have been most active and I've noticed the most activity, but I put that down to people liking shiny new things.

I would likely be one of the younger members that are still active around here (I'm 17 ). I know lots of people my age who are into transport There is a massive community of teenage gunzels on Instagram who post there every day, but I don't know anyone who would regularly visit or post on ATDB. I only stumbled across the ATDB when I was setting up my blog (similar search terms), but so many people who would be interested never really find us here. Lots of the gunzels I'm friends with used to be prolific posters on here, but now post exclusively in private Facebook groups, which you can only join if you know the admins. Why that has become the case? I don't know, but it is a sad decline for such a wonderful forum. Facebook is very good for sharing images, which is the one area that I know this forum lacks in - lots of younger gunzels very much like the photo focused culture of Instagram/Facebook.

I'm interested in smaller details of fleet details, fleet lists or company histories, but I'm probably one of a few. I could post fleet observations and other things I see, but unless its really noticeable, I tend to keep it to myself to avoid being chastised for posting something that isn't notable enough. Also, the personal attacks that I and other users have received over the years, whilst well dealt with by the moderators, can be a little offputting at time.

If anything, the fleet lists section of the site needs to continue to be maintained at all costs. So much history would be lost if that were to fold. I genuinely love the ATDB and would sorely miss it if it was gone. If I could help keep it around just a little bit longer, I would.

[ScaniaGrenda]

While not an ATDB Issue, I have said in the past I had a huge concern with content only being shared behind restricted Facebook groups and the gist of what I got from some other people was "Why don't you simply just join the group" or brushing it off not to be that big of a deal. I only use my Facebook account for my own page and that's it, I don't want to join any groups and I'm not big on the idea of using personal accounts to join groups, I'd much rather use my own page if I could but all of this is for another story, another time.

I'm seriously concerned what happens to all of the photos & content that's locked behind those restricted groups when the admins stop posting or using Facebook, no one except those still in the group will be able to look back on previously posted content, those who were too late to join the party are going to sadly miss out on some great content. The last thing we need is any form of history behind locked behind some stupid nonsense wall. I'd love it if people could donate their historical photos, media / documents to a museum or historical society who I know would appreciate it. Saves later on trying to do a wild goose chase for the missing history and losing it forever rather than finding it

But we have it lucky here, an Australian transport discussion board that's open, small amount of active users sharing photos (don't even need to be logged in) and sure the activity hasn't been the best lately but it's still somewhat there. We can't forget the Fleet-Lists either as that's a lot of work to maintain & keep up to date. If it wasn't for the fleet-listings I believe a lot of companies bus fleets overtime would've been lost to the past only a thing in memories and perhaps people who bothered to create their own fleet-listings. I enjoy looking at the fleet-list and seeing where buses have ended up 15 or 20 years later down the line, "oh this one started it's life at Hillsbus, now it's a retired bus that's owned by XYZ doing charter work".

[Admet75]

Firstly I wish to thank those who keep the ATDB board alive and kicking spending countless time moderating and posting of posts and also making sure we adhere to the rules is a hard task.

ATDB started way before Facebook even became a reality and Discussion boards such as these were the norms for people to contribute to stories and ideas and unfortunately we have a problem that Facebook does that but confuses everyone because there are numerous boards which an average user does not know which site he likes and which one has he contributed to. Unfortunately this has led to the same picture being on numerous other Facebook pages that some gunzels have returned to our traditional ATDB board.

We know that ATDB might not always be perfect but its hell of a lot better than it was. News from operators have been quiet of late because COVID19 has taken over as priority reporting from numerous news companies rather than our normal transport fix.

The board indeed has a future and it inspired many others to create their own and many migrate to those boards and come back to this one.

This board has indeed become more professional in the past five years from asking us to name our source before we decide to became keyboard warriors. The only one problem sometimes people are not revealing their source even though they have been asked to many times if its service change related. The laughable moment happens when that source is say a tram conductor (yes they were a great source of rumours on the Glenelg tramline especially) but today these are likely to be bus drivers, transport department employees etc or retired transport department employees who have asked for immunity and that gunzel then opens his mouth.

This board unlike others 99.9% reliability including what many others don't have a quick response if you have any questions of concerns.

Yes we work as a team on the board to educate ourselves and others which is a great service to the community.

I have some suggestions that some gunzels might consider to be worthwhile:

* Maybe if you have a story or a history about a town/city operation why not write an article about it with appropriate pictures
* Providing some interesting snap shots of the past- for example what was it like in the heyday of riding on a tram in the last year of its operations (1961).

Some other ideas I will come to later on. But these are just a few.

[Fleet Lists]

This where we need the "Thank You" facility back - at least this adds another one to the edit count.

[LB608]

The board is great for news and photos, but one thing that hasn't been mentioned,the board needs somebody to be in training with FLEETLIST's as he is in his 80's and one day he is not going to here,so someone should be in training with him to take over when this happens,we all hope that does not happen for another 20 years

[David10]

There are probably multiple reasons for it, but compared to years gone by, the board is very quiet.

When I first joined the ATDB 10 years ago, opinions were many and varied, but discussions were held in a respectful manner. That seemed to change about 5 years ago when a small number of combative posters began to dominate proceedings, turning multiple threads into forums to ram their (often ill-informed) opinions down the throats of others and picking fights. That was followed by a notable decline in the number of contributors, some of whom were on the inside and able to offer valuable insights, presumably having grown weary of being constantly shouted down.

Then there was some quite frankly disgraceful class warfare with people going about their jobs being described as bastards and jobsworths because they chose to perform their jobs as instructed rather than break the rules as one poster thought they should. Given that a sizeable part of the membership I would expect are or were transport workers and a laissez-faire approach taken by admin when pointed out, probably put many people off.

Fast forward to today, the board (at least the NSW section) is seemingly dominated by complaining about government policy which is only going to have limited appeal. The splintering to smaller closed shop social media sites is regrettable, but by weeding out those who cause aggravation, results in a more convivial environment for the majority.

[Centralian]

This where we need the "Thank You" facility back - at least this adds another one to the edit count.

I also agree that the 'thank you' facility should be returned. I think everyone enjoys a 'pat on the back' for a good post, comment, photo or whatever, a bit of recognition for something well done from their peers in the enthusiast community. At least you know someone has an interest in what you're on about, even if no comments are posted. I don't know that there needs to be a running tally of how many each person has made or received, but certainly for the specific post.

[Bus-1809]

I'm noticing among the enthusiast community, that the "old hands" have moved on from this forum, because the old steeds that interest us, are of little interest to the current generation of enthusiasts. It seems to all be, B7 this, and K310 that, and how many computers, screens and wifi does this bus have... You could mention "O.680 and Wilson" to some of the new generation and they'd have no clue what you were on about.

I agree with Merc1107, that it's always good to be able to flick through the site and find info in the old pages. Sadly though, a lot of the gunzels of old have moved on to the Facebook Groups (the 1,000,001 that there are) and post everything on there, in locked & often hidden pages. I am on probably 3 bus pages on facebook, none of which are for my own state, where I reside.

The future of the board is a hard one. Yes it's useful to flick through the pages for history as I said, or the odd bits and bobs regarding new buses etc.., but unfortunately the novelty of the board has worn off and I really think the poor old girl has run her course. The discussions in some of the threads are not anything like they used to be. It seems to be a case of, if it's got more than 1000km on the odometer, it's of no interest to the younger generation who apparently know better than some of us who even drive the damn things.

Perhaps it is time for her to be withdrawn from service and donated to a preservation society?

P.S. Please excuse my rant above.