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Sunday Morning Trains

Julian Crow, General Manager, West of England for FGW - presentation and questions and answers.

23rd September, 7:30 p.m., Dewey House, North Row, Warminster.

Organised by West Wilts Rail Users Group - but a Public meeting so open to all.

West Wilts Connections

From Melksham at 06:40
From Bradford on Avon at 18:47
From Trowbridge at 18:53
From Westbury at 19:01

return to Westbury by 22:18
Trowbridge by 22:46
Bradford on Avon by 22:54
Melksham by 07:17

More details - call 01985 214397

There's little point in my making a song and dance about it and trying to massage the facts to show what a poor train connection is available from Melksham - the facts alone make a strong point.

Interesting to note, though, that Melksham is the second largest of the West Wilts towns after Trowbridge, so in a "fair" world you would expect meetings such as this to be most accessible from Trowbridge, then from Melksham, with any connectional problems being from the smaller places of Warminster, Bradford-on-Avon and Westbury

Daniel,

You're correct in commenting that things were quieter here during the summer.

It's three years now since we were first learned (via a letter in the local paper from Fleur deRhe Phiipe, the Cabinet member responsible for transport at Wiltshire Council) that we had just missed the consultation about planned service reductions and we've been working / campaigning hard since.

We've move forward hugely ... but someone commented to me very early on that rail campaiging takes 10 times the time (and solutions have 10 times the price) of campaiging in other areas - it would have been much easier for us to save a local post office, for example (but, regrettably, I cannot travel from Melksham to Swindon or Chippenham to Trowbridge in a post office).  And where a campaign runs for this long, it's all too easy to get "campaign fatigue".  There also times where public campaigning is less effective, in terms of it being better to work behind the scenes and / or take a break to a good time when people's eyes are on the ball, and for inputs and campaign visibility to reach a peak when it's most appropriate.

Things going on behind the scenes ... Fleur was goiong to get a specific forward looking report commissioned before the summer, and we'll be staring to chase her to find out how that's getting on in the next few weeks, with a view to moving forward to what is now commonly regarded as an appropriate service from December 2009.

Keep watching this space