See the "shuttle" from Westbury to Southampton.

2006 - 2007 ... run it every 2 hours ... possible if you add another 153 and extend it to Swindon.  You then solve the "Melksham issue" as I suspect First call it, but really you're solving Swindon to Trowbridge, Chippenham to Salisbury, Warminster to Swindon and a host more issues too. A strong service indeed.

But is there any point in building up a service such as this over a year? Yes, there is.  From 2007, the shuttle operation goes to the SW franchise; at that point, the Swindon to Salisbury runs naturally into the Salisbury to Waterloo stopper. More modern trains. Alternative London arrival on the South Bank for Chippenham passenegers. Good through services from Trowbridge and Warminster to London (not just 2 a day). Sounds attractive, doesn't it?  If First win the SW trains franchise, they've a blossoming service that they won't have had to bid too much to get, and if someone like Stagecoach get it, there might be a little bit of real competition around.

This is the forward looking innovation that's needed in an industry / region that's rapidly growing in customer numbers.  If the existing operator doesn't see the potential ...

Please bear in mind that's just an example, Nick ... the Oxford to Bristol service was an innovative success until it was killed off (long story there, I understand. Not for lack of customers, according to several versions) and there may be something in parts of that routing too.  Yet one of the big issues is that with so many conflicting players each who needs to make his own buisness case / profit, we're looking at best case at a playing filed that's not level and at a worst case at a playing field that's tuned on its head.

There IS a case for longer distance running / logical through routes.   A train A-B-C-D-E offers 10 travel options (A to B C, D and E , B to C , D and E, C to D and E and D to E), and a train E-F-G-H-I also offers 10 options.   Good conenctions offer many more.  But a train A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I offers 36 direct.   And customers prefer not to change (but see next paragraph).  Now the number of passenger going from (say) B to I may not be great but add up all the individual journeys and you've got potential substantive traffic ... 2 + 2 = 7.  These things can work very well indeed provided that there isn't a dogleg at E, and provided that there's no reliability issue caused by longer distance trains getting delayed; Cross-country services have suffererd very badly because of this; a later running Bristol Parkway to Temple Meads train I cause was explained as due to operational issues in Scotland.    If you should re-read theis paragraph considering "A" to be Swindon and "H" to be Wilton, you might like "B" to "I" and "A" to "G".

I've travelled, though not recently, by train in Switzerland and Holland and been impressed by regular connections.  If cross-platform connections between frequent (hourly) regular interval services were possible, then the train can become a way of life and usage grow.  I think I was just dreaming of hourly Oxford to Weymouth and Cardiff to Portsmouth trains stopping across the platform from each other for 5 minutes at Westbury ... and yet there's a certain forward looking sense there. But it would need a political sea change and, good heavens, the railways suffer from too many changes already.