On Friday 30 July, Lee and I attended the quarterly meeting of the Heart of Wessex Community Rail Working Party, at the Great Western Inn, Yeovil Pen Mill.  We were there to represent TransWilts Community Rail Partnership, at the kind invitation of Catherine Phillips and John Hill.

The main part of the meeting was a ‘station by station’ update from their various local groups, as an overview of the Heart of Wessex Line.  As some of those stations are not specifically on the TransWilts line, I’ll just summarise some of them here, if I may:

Freshford: plaudits all round for the very welcome return of the old running board (see here for further details of this story);

Avoncliff: concerns raised about trains stopping, with only the very front door being opened – FGW staff present acknowledged that this was odd (and unnecessary) and they would investigate;

Bradford on Avon: Help points working (I think that’s right?), but concerns over surface / rainwater overflowing and freezing in bad weather;

Trowbridge: Increased police involvement after recent problems has helped, but there is still a problem with plants being stolen from floral displays;

Westbury: I was invited to give a summary of the proposed joint ‘adoption’ of Westbury Station by Heart of Wessex and TransWilts CRPs – more on this specifically here;

Dilton Marsh: not actually on the Heart of Wessex line, but Lee and I were invited to give a brief summary of our work there – the timetable leaflet and its distribution, and the station artwork – which went down very well (our thanks here to everyone else involved, particularly Bob Lee and Ian Cunningham);

Frome: building maintenance issues raised;

Bruton, Castle Cary: some ongoing issues discussed;

And, for all the other stations further south: if I may, I’ll post further details from the Heart of Wessex minutes, in due course, rather than duplicate effort by trying to minute them here myself.

Julian Crow, FGW General Manager for West of England, then gave an update on various service issues.  Of note were the three main occasions on which their service delivery had suffered - these were generally due to circumstances beyond the direct control of FGW: ice / snow; a significant increase in railway suicides; and signalling problems / cable theft.

I think this is an accurate summary of the meeting – which was generally very positive, as far as our involvement is concerned.  The friendly people at Heart of Wessex are clearly keen to work together, and I’m sure we can continue to work with them for our mutual benefit, particularly on those stations where our lines ‘overlap’, so to speak!

Chris.