I was saddened to hear that one of our elected bodies here in Melksham responded to the South West trains franchise suggesting that a saving in rolling stock could be made by cutting out the Bristol, Plymouth and Torbay services - cutting back the service from Waterloo to Salisbury and Exeter.

I am very much in favour of everyone expressing their views, but this council view does not represent my view nor, as far as I can gauge, the view of other local electors around here.  Frankly, most Melksham electors have little interest in (or knowledge of) public transport in Devon and it is meddlesome at best for us to suggest that it's cut. (That's a personal view).

The letter in question is, I understand, being taken as an example of how official bodies in the area support the pruning of services, and has made the Minister's "red box" so that he's espcially aware of such views.  And the people at RailFuture who's meeting I attended yesterday and who campaign tirelessly for an appropriate level of service are not best pleased, as you might imagine.

There's a further irony.   The southern end of the Southampton to Swindon service has been given a one year reprive under First, and will then form a part of the South West trains franchise.  By suggesting that the South West Franchise is trimmed back to Salisbury / Exeter, the council that wrote is advocating the withdrawal of the extra trains that could also have been used to extend the Southampton to Westbury service of the next year on through to Melksham, Chippenham and Swindon.