The West Wilts Rail Users's group has Andrew Seedhouse - who works for the Department for Transport and is based in GoSW (Government Offices South West) as their guest speaker at their meeting on Tuesday, 7th November at 7 p.m. at Bridge House, Trowbridge - right by the station there, and conveninently timed to get the train down from Swindon, Chippenham and Melksham.

I'm not sure of the format / how many questions will be allowed, but I do know (1) it's an open meeting - anyone welcome, (2) Andrew is one of the major recommenders from the South West up to central DfT with regards what the region wants.   I spoke briefly with Andrew in Taunton late last month; he's past provinding input to his lords and masters with regards to December's timetable disaster and takes the official line, but it would still be worthwhile giving a good show on 7th November.

Can YOU make it??

An interesting meeting ... further report to follow.   It was noticable to see that the Swrindon to Westbury service was quite prominent in the questions / concerns expressed at the meeting, even though it only accounts for a small proportion of what the West Wilts Rail user's group that hosted the meeting is about.

Andrew Seedhouse, when asked, informed us that the 2 services per day between Swindon and Westbury are a core part of the FGW franchise specification for the next ten years, and as such are safeguarded for that duration. He pointed out that there were no core services removed from the previous franchise during its life, and told us that was a precendent for his comments and assurances.

Andrew commented that Andrew Griffiths (First's regional manager who covers our area) is a good man keen on developing services and suggests that we keep well in touch with him with a view to updating the timings of the limited trains that we have remaining so that, at the very least, we can make the best use of those.  I agree with him, and I also agree that we should keep exploring other avenues such as Oxford - Southampton options which do appear to have a sensible commercial case.

Co-incidentally, I had an email from Andrew Griffiths in my mail box when I got back, commenting on traffic figures. Oh Andrew, I don't knwo which days you travel on the train ... but it was hard to get a seat on the way down from melksham to Trowbridge last night, and there were double figures on the service when we came back at 21:24.  Even if I didn't count myself in the figures, there were still double figures.   I do wonder if figures quoted are still based on number of passengers divided by trains scheduled, and end up getting rather biased on weeks where a bus replaces some of the trains - that's 3 weeks out of the last four.   But that's a separate subject.