I've copied here my response to SWPTUF on the cross Country services franchise; something of a side issue EXCEPT that many Melksham rail users ARE traveliing long distances ...

Q1)  The services of the crosscountry network are regularly used by customers to and from our business at Melksham in Wiltshire.  Delegates travel from all over the country; journeys from the North of England, Scotland, and the Midlands are sometimes made via Bristol, or via Oxford / Didcot / Reading.

Connections to Melksham from crosscountry services are already poor and many journeys are made in-then-out via London adding considerable mileage and cost onto our customer's journeys.

In the future, customers use of these services depends on the availability of journey opportunities to and from Melksham, currently under threat under the new Great Western franchise.  If the Melksham service is reduced to trains from Swindon at 06:20 and 18:12, then we would see a reduction from around 40% of our customers arriving by train to rail journeys being made to us (inluding cross country journeys) to only very occasional use indeed.

Q2)  Availability of connecting services to and from our place of business - if the full journey is not available by train, our customers hire cars for the journey or (from Scotland) fly.  For long distance journeys, it's the availability of trains at an appropriate time of day and forming a network NOT just to main centres but to Melksham (at our end) and places as diverse as Bolton, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Boston Spa, Leeds, Liverpool, Colchester, Maidstone ... at the other.

Q3) I believe that there is scope to run crosscountry services that currently terminate in Reading from Oxford via Swindon, Chippenham, Trowbridge and Westbury on to Salisbury and Southampton. Such a service extension would fill a public transport vacuum from the Midlands, North of England and Scotland to Wessex and would provide considerable other travel opportunities such as Oxford to Salisbury (for tourist traffic), Oxford to Swindon and Chippenham (where the popular hourly service was withdrawn due to track capacity issues at Bath and Bristol and you see people still struggling with connections at Didcot), and Salisbury to Southampton where traffic on offer is sufficient for a government commissioned report in 2000 to suggest an hourly service.

Q4) Documentation could be provided to show our customer flows - low but significant to us - onto all services. I cannot provide evidence that the traffic will be lost to rail in December 2006,  except to point out the rather obvious that if there's no train available, people can't be using it.  I have a copy of the Swindon - Southampton report of 2000.

Questions were:

Q1) What contribution does the CrossCountry network presently make to your organisation (e.g., vital; regular [business] user), and how might your organisation be involved with the CrossCountry Network in future (e.g. would-be frequent/regular user if…; )?

Q2) What are your specific priorities for the next re-franchise (e.g. getting a seat [reduce overcrowding]; connections/connectivity; ticketing issues; station problems)? 

Q3) Any other comments (e.g. value of existing network; possible growth areas/enhancements)? 

Q4) What evidence do you have to support your views?  (Are your views anecdotal or can you support them by documentary evidence?) This is important to help justify issues raised.