I live in Dilton Marsh, 1 mile away from the station.  Although I do not use the train every day (I find it quicker and cheaper to drive to work), I am finding it increasingly frustrating and difficult to use our station for daily commutes to and from work.

I work in Bristol during office hours, 9:00 to 5:00.  Getting to Bristol is not a problem as there are trains at 0636, 0727 and 0746.  It’s the return journey that really is pain.  There is a perfectly timed 1722 from Bristol Temple Meads but that service does not stop at Dilton any more.  The earlier 1622 gets to Westbury, only to be followed 7 minutes later by an empty train which does stop at Dilton (how much does this service cost I wonder!?).  The 1822 doesn’t stop at Dilton either – the advice for this one is to change at Warminster, wait 23 minutes and get the next train back!  And so it goes on……..

Being so close to the station, I have the option to walk from home (which takes approx 15 minutes) or drive and park close by (which takes 3 minutes).  With no option of a return train at a suitable time, I am forced to drive to Westbury station, park the car, buy a car park ticket, return to the car, fix the ticket to the windscreen then walk over to the station and get on the train (which was sat at Dilton only 2 minutes ago!).  All-in-all this takes 20 minutes, costs a couple of £ in parking fees, probably 50p (?) in fuel, plus a bit of damage to the environment.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who is using Dilton station less and less, so I’d welcome anybody’s thoughts and views on this.  How can we all lobby together to get a decent service back?  I’m sure there are others who would commute from Dilton to Bristol, Bath and Trowbridge if the services allowed.

On another, slightly lighter-hearted note…  Last Friday I was waiting for the delayed (sound familiar???) 17:22 from Temple Meads and decided to look on the hard-copy timetables located on the platform to see the train times to Dilton (just in case there was one I was un-aware of!)  – I was shocked to see that Dilton is not even listed!  Is this the sign of things to come???

Yes, welcome to the forum. I now regularly travel home from Warminster to Oldfield Park using the direct 1728 Warminster- Great Malvern service. Dilton Marsh is the first stop, and I'd say over half the time we get called to stop there. The other day around six people got off. Surprisingly few get on though, although only a couple normally get on at Westbury anyway. Dilton Marsh itself is quite a big place with many houses as Lee pointed out, and in my view deserves a better service.

I completely agree that the evening service is inadequate. It's a real shame the 1722 from Bristol doesn't stop at Dilton marsh anymore as it seemed to me like the perfect commuter train back from Bristol and Bath (and even Filton). I can plainly see why th evening service is inadequate and every step should be made to reinstate this stop for people using the station who have been displaced by the change. Do you know of anyone else who no longer uses the station because of this decision?

What I propose for the station is in the short term better evening Bristol connections, and in the long term more direct trains to Salisbury. It's not so useful having almost all southbound trains which now terminate 5 minutes down the line at Warminster, as if you want to go further south you normally have to wait a further 30 minutes there- out of the question. I do realise timings are already fairly tight on FGW services, but perhaps if SWT could be persuaded to run trains from Waterloo/Salisbury up to Swindon then Dilton Marsh could certainly benefit.

"Westbury-Southampton service serves Dilton Marsh" - The Westbury-Southampton service did serve Dilton Marsh prior to December 2007, but much of the service pattern was then cut back to terminate at Warminster, with a wait of around 50 minutes for southbound connections to Salisbury, Romsey and Southampton. Of course, you could travel northbound to Westbury and cut this waiting time by around half, but then that rather reduces the usefulness of several southbound Dilton Marsh services......

"Stopping trains at Dilton Marsh would require new paths/lengthen overall journey times/impede access at Southampton etc." - FOI documents show that, as part of the December 2007 timetable planning process, FGW train planners had concluded that it was possible to theoretically include extra stops at Dilton Marsh in the following services, without lengthening overall journey times :

0545 Bristol Temple Meads-Portsmouth
0630 Cardiff Central-Portsmouth

"Dilton Marsh has very low footfall of passengers" - It depends on your definition. According to the latest available station usage figures, passenger numbers at Dilton Marsh grew by 26% over a 2-year period (link below.)
http://www.raildocuments.org.uk/gwfuture/stationtotalsummary.xls

As noted in earlier posts, this potential is likely to grow in the future along with planned development.

"I know this will seem like a hollow promise, however I assure you that we take our customers views very seriously" - It is indeed a hollow promise, as the logical conclusuion reached when reading this letter is that FGW dont give a monkeys about the views of Dilton Marsh passengers.

To be frank, the only way that FGW are likely to call more Cardiff-Portsmouth services at Dilton Marsh is if the DfT specify such stops and force them to. However, I am in a similar position to barryslip, in that Andrew Murrison sent a letter on much the same issue on my behalf to DfT Rail Minister Tom Harris.

The upshot of the Minister's reply was that FGW were free to add more stops in their services at Dilton Marsh, and it was down to them to do so.....


I catch the 2030 Cardiff-Portsmouth service on a fairly regular basis. It calls at Dilton Marsh, with no change to the standard journey time between Westbury-Warminster.

Therefore, the fact that the train calls there is absolutely no skin off my nose.