Chris here this week with a story of our trip to Edinburgh to the Open Hardware summit 2025 .

This was supposed to be the post we talked about all the exciting projects we saw and people we met at OSHWA Open Hardware Summit in Edinburgh.

How Mike Coats is reverse engineering proprietary bike components to prevent e-waste

Or Carson Holgate is breathing new life into old Knitting machines

The 3d printed circuits Oliver Childs is making with their Printegrated circuits

And of course catching up with good friends, like Jo Hinchliffe with their panel appearance discussing Rockets!

Our own contribution was to be a table at the event showing our open source bike projects using My Bike’s got LED. We also created a new collection for Museum in a Box showing previous Open Source Hardware projects of MCQN

If you want to catch up with the event the talks and panel discussions are available on YouTube

With our plans for an MCQN table complete we set off early on Thursday morning. Bikes packed, many, many tickets printed, and an impressive array of lights on Adrian’s bike.

All set we put ourselves in the hands of the national rail network. What could possibly go wrong? We made it to Warrington Central with no issues, dashed across to Warrington Bank Quay with plenty of time to make the connection.

Two bikes propped up against the fence at Warrington Bank Quay. If we had known then that the train we were waiting for would not get beyond Preston it could have been a very different day.

Very helpful staff loaded our bikes onto the Glasgow train and we settled down to make plans for our bike ride along the Union canal from Glasgow to Edinburgh. The itinerary was to include a stop at the Falkirk Wheel and then on to our accommodation for the summit. All was well and we were in the best of all possible worlds.

Just north of Preston the unravelling began, the train stopped and the waiting started. The announcement wasn’t unduly concerning , “Unfortunately there is a problem with the line and there will be a slight delay to your journey.” As time passed and the train manager had run up and down the train with increasing urgency it became clearer ‘slight’ might not be entirely accurate. Still we were comfortable and sat at a table with laptop chargers, so we continued to plan while we waited.

“There is no reason to be alarmed but we are going to turn off the power to the train to conserve battery, the lights will be turned off.” This was followed by the train manager traversing the carriage installing glow sticks.

A picture of a glowstick fixed to the wall of a train as emergency lighting

Our planning stopped and we began to suspect that getting to Glasgow in time to bike to Edinburgh was getting less likely. Not to worry, we could get a connecting train from Glasgow and still make the summit on time.

“Because of problems with the overhead lines this train cannot continue, we will transfer you to another train and return to Preston. Please collect all your belongings.”

The carriage became a chorus of chipper, stiff upper lip mobile calls, “I’m probably not going to make it today”, “Can you reschedule my meeting”, “We’ll have to rearrange that pint”. An orderly evacuation began, we really are a nation that is great at queuing. Because we had very loaded bikes to transfer it was decided that we should be the last off so that we could sort out our kit. While we waited we sat in the drivers seats, realising the childhood dream, but promising not to put any pictures on social media. When our turn came we unclipped panniers, detached a megaphone, removed Lightbeams and generally tried to give the impression that this was all perfectly normal bike packing kit. We climbed down the ladder from one train and up onboard the next, and ultimately headed back to Preston.

In a very gentle and inconvenient, rather than catastrophic, way we were then treated to a demonstration of how quickly a system breaks down. At one point we broke off from trying to persuade replacement bus drivers they had room for our bikes to get ourselves a coffee. While we were drinking that a queue formed around us, and it wasn’t at all easy to find anyone who knew what they were queuing for. For lack of any better information a queue at least gave the impression of a plan. We later discovered it was a queue for the replacement taxis, that were replacing the replacement buses because of the lack of replacement bus drivers. If we had stayed put we might have been only a few hours from a road transfer to Carlisle to battle for a space on a north bound train from there. We did come very close to a train that would have taken us up the east coast via York but missed it by seconds. Despite our best efforts it became apparent that there wasn’t a solution to getting us and our bikes over the border. Reluctantly we had to admit defeat and biked down to Ormskirk for a train that would get us back home.

Two bikes, loaded with luggage, propped up against the railings of a bridge over a canal. Unfortunately not the Union canal in Scotland

It was a huge disappointment not to make the summit but we have at least prepared some new resources for our visit to Liverpool Makefest. Hopefully there will be other opportunities to attend other Open Hardware Summits and visit the Edinburgh hacklab who kindly offer us support if we made it that far, and to cycle the Union canal.