| Archived Save the Train forum articles - 2005 to 2010. See below
Remember - only 1 in 4 users gets on or off at Melksham - 148/351 Written by user on Saturday, 11th February 2006 "I use the service as a part of a through journey and occasionally to Melksham itself. I've seen the numbers of users increase significantly since service increases a few years back... it would be simply daft to cut rather than further increase services. The DfT must be resisted.. what they're at Melksham planning is a template for many other routes." Re: Remember - only 1 in 4 users gets on or off at Melksham - 148/352 Written by admin (Graham Ellis) on Saturday, 11th February 2006 We've now had well over 2500 unique host computers visit the "Save the Train" web site and well over 100 have signed up to the cause. That's a far cry from the 7 (which didn't include me) who wrote last Easter to the SRA to object to the plans; no lack of interest at least on my part - simply because I didn't know of the threat. It's kind of hard to write your comments about a plan if you don't even know about that plan. From observing the trains with a view to forming as complete a picture as I could on individual weekdays last September and December, and from a whole host of other more casual observations, I've concluded that somewhere between 1 in 3 and 1 in 4 passengers who are one the train arriving at or leaving Melksham actually get on or off - the rest are through passengers. And one of the difficulties of the campaign has been to reach the travellers (and especially the occasional ones) in this group. If over 27000 tickets were sold to and from Melksham in the last complete financial year, and for each ticket sold there were between 2 and 3 ADDITIONAL travellers on the line, we're looking at an annual footfall of around 100000. link to index of articles |
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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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