The Station South Cycle Café in Levenshulme was the venue on October 15^th 2025 for an interesting and informative meeting of the Cycle Rail Forum for the North, a group which,  although it had not met face-to-face for some time, nevertheless managed to attract excellent input from a number of senior Northern Railway Managers and other guest speakers.

Situated conveniently on the intersection of Stockport Road and the Fallowfield Loop in the heart of Levenshulme,  the Station South Cycle Café is a great  place to visit, relax and learn more about all the community activities which are based there. Read more here…

Les Webb, Secretary of the Forum, introduced speakers, gave a short history of the work of the group and expressed his wish that a pattern of regular meetings - either online or in-person  - could be resumed at venues across the Northern network.

Neil Carmichael, Simon Ashworth and Becky Styles gave a detailed update on Northern’s Active Travel plans and on its Cycle Promise (here) and Paul Batty and Steve Rowell outlined Northern’s plans for new rolling stock.

Adrian Lord, Manager of Transport for Greater Manchester’s Active Travel initiative, updated the meeting on TfGM’s mission to “ building a world-class active travel (walking, wheeling and cycling) network”.  Lots more details here…

Chas Ball introduced the meeting to the work of EPIKS – Environmental Projects in Kirklees, an organisation which seeks to provide practical solutions to environmental problems on a not-for-profit basis.

David Hibbs from the Walk Wheel Cycle Trust (the renamed SUSTRANS!) explained the reasons behind the change of name and spoke about WWCT’s future vision

This was the first face to face contact that the author of this post had had with this particular forum – the range of projects and ambitions outlined by speakers was outstanding !