* Overview / Background

Swindon - Chippenham - Melksham - Trowbridge - Westbury - Dilton Marsh - Warminster - Salisbury train service. Nurtured from 2001 to 2006, with ticket sales at Melksham up eight fold. Latest annual passenger count - 120000.

Slashed back last December to just 2 trains a day, Estimated passengers for 2007 - 7000 (that's just 6% of the numbers who used it last year).

* Origins

Founded - August 2005. A Web site, as a result of seeing a letter in the local paper which said "do you realise you have missed the consultation for 2007 train services".

* Objectives

1. To bring the case for an appropriate train service connection the five major population centres of Wiltshire to the serious attention of those able to specify, finance and provide such a service.

2. To have the case seriously and fully evaluated in order to establish what an appropriate service actually comprises.

3. To work for the provision of such an appropriate service (includes service level, timing, pricing, reliability,booking arrangements, publicity, comfort)

4. To work for the retention of that service once achieved, and of any lesser service prior to that point both as at least some service to the curent customers, and as a stepping stone to the future.

* Outcomes

First objective (known). When we came to the case, the TransWilts service was two sentences in the middle of 100 page SRA report covering Paddington to Pembroke Dock to Penzance. Now it (and the town of Melksham, served only by the line) are much better known.

Second Objective (looked at). From an initial reaction which verged on the "don't be silly and ask for more that 2 trains a day" we moved forward to a very serious proposal for 5 a day from this December - DfT, County Council and First all on board, as confirmed by FOI. And the County Council has concluded that an appropriate level of service would be hourly each way.

Third Objective (implemented). No. Not acheived. The detailed proposals that we were almost-promised ("just needs to be signed off by Network Rail") at a public meeting in May disappeared from the draft timetable from this coming December; reasons not totally clear to me.

Fourth Objective (retention and lesser goals). We strongly suspect that in August 2006 when the service was withdrawn for 10 days that it would have returned as a bus ... as per current precedents in Staffordshire and Watford. However, publicity and activities including a gathering of VIPs on the station before six in the morning resulted in the appearance of a smarter-than-normal service.

A new southbound service, operated on a commercial basis by First Great Western, starts early on a Sunday evening in December. It's just one train a week, but it's at a time that it plugs a real hole and it's significant in demonstrating goodwill and being commercial.

Train cancellations remain a serious issue (to the extent that First have installed a special bus stop labelled "Rail Replacement services" at Trowbridge station), but we're no longer in the same class as the 07:10 Bristol to Paddington which is cancelled on around 25% of the time.

Early Morning buses from Melksham, and evening buses back, now make calls at the railway station in Chippenham. After an unbelievably hard struggle, the bus stop at the station now carries the times of those buses. They are clearly used, judging by the complaints from Chippenham taxi drivers that fares to Melksham have dried up

* Ongoing

We beleive that we have an excellent chance of moving towards an appropriate service from May or December 2008. Please add YOUR support.

http://www.savethetrain.org.uk • 01225 708225 • Graham Ellis - 1.11.07

(From a talk to be given 3.11.2007 - see http://www.savethetrain.org.uk/national/)