Archived Save the Train forum articles - 2005 to 2010. See below
What's where on this site? - 125/297 Written by admin (Graham Ellis) on Sunday, 22nd January 2006
You're in the user forum section of the "Save The Train" web site, which is dedicated to efforts to ensure that the Swindon to Westbury Salisbury and Southampton train service continues to run at a level that's appropriate to the needs of the area it serves.
The current service is 5 trains a day each way ... but traffic has grown by 35% per annum in each of the five years, and I believe that the most appropriate service for the First group (who take over the line on 1st April) to offer would be 8 trains per day - operationally, that's a single train providing a Swindon <----> Westbury service.
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Save the Train was the campaign to bring an approriate train service back to and through Melksham.
Most big contributors are still around writing at the Coffee shop forum where new members are very welcome.
The train has been saved - sort of - we have stepped back up from an unusable service to a poorish one but it's doing very well. We did that through setting up the TransWilts Community Rail Partnership. That fulfilled its early objectives; it has been taken over by local and regional government types who are now doing medium and long term work. The team from this forun can also be found at the Melksham Rail User Group (which was the Melksham Rail Development Group at the time these articles were written and we had no users.
We mustn't loose sight, though, that the train service remains poor and needs our community support in marketing and campaigning to keep it going in a positive direction ... and all the more so when we're expecting to find a different normallity once we get out of the Coronavirus Pandemic and head for zero carbon via the climate crisis. Yes, it's saved ... it's now a key community facility ... the need for enhancement and the strong and near-universal local support remain, and the rail industry and goverment remain slow to move and provide the enhancements even to level us up with other towns. Please support the Melksham Rail User Group - now very much in partnership rather than protest with the rail industry and local government, including GWR, TransWilts and unitary and town councils. And please use the trains and buses, and cycle and walk when you can.
-- Graham Ellis, (webmaster), February 2021
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