Over the past couple of days, we have had a series of meetings and moved things forward.   Friday Evening was the Melksham Railway Development Group, and on Saturday we had a First Great Western CoffeeShop meeting that transmogrified into a Save the Train meeting when Coffeeshop business was concluded (that transmogrification had been planned).   So what does this mean?

Evidence continues to build for a decent TransWilts train service - one that runs when people would use it, with new services giving travellers good return journey opportunities when added to the existing skeleton service.  What we really need is for "X", "Y" and "Z" - decision makers at each of the key player organisations to put there heads together and say 'let's go for it - let's sort this our'.  And we are talking constructively to X, to Y and to Z.  And we are seeing a willingness to work it out, and small movements which may allow significant bridging of the gulf that existed between various positions as recently as the tail end of last year.

"Save the Train" has drawn up a vision for the future - not only to regain the service, but to support it and grow it (and the facilities along the line too) and retain it.  We're looking forward in some of the work to 2011, 2014, 2019 and even 2026  as there is little point in getting a service put in place for just a year or two.  And the visions and plans all correlate and work with government stratgies such as the RSS, sustainable transport, DfT funding of local services from 2014, and so on.  The jigsaw pieces fit.

In the short term, though, there is a lot happening away from the regional railway front. Eyes are on the recession, the unitary elections, the restructuring of county, planning transport for the Olympics and much more.  And priorities / decisions need to be made.  So we've opened a pledge campaign - similar to one that we ran last year, and has helped to get the case taken seriously to the extent it is today, asking you to say "I support the provision of an appropriate service".   You should see some publicity for this in coming weeks - we're running through April and May.   And please sign up and please pass on the URL:

http://www.transwilts.org.uk/pledge.html