Chris, that's an excellent suggestion. It takes as little as 3 minutes at the platform at Chippenham to turn a train around - I saw it done the other week, and with 10 minutes "dwell" on the way through at Westbury, there's a slackness there which would allow any delays to be caught up.
People do travel from the county town to London and First could "grab" more passengers for their service this way ... and a high proportion of Melksham passengers are long distance so a Reading and London service would be superb.
Alison Forster was commenting on Saturday that for every 1 passenger they carry, there's another 1.5 out there in the market - in other words, PLENTY of scope for growing services. Personally, I feel that the marketing on the current Wessex services has NOT emphasises the TransWilts services and the ratio is more like 1:5 that 1:1.5 and I think we've been showing with 35% per annum growth for the past 5 years and even traffic increases in the various quick counts I've taken that it is getting better known already.
If you haven't looked / make your inputs, please PLEASE do them to
tt06@firstgroup.com by Wednesday of this week - rather than me pass them on, use your own words make your own voice heard.