| Archived Save the Train forum articles - 2005 to 2010. See below
Hello - 28/36 Written by David Preston on Wednesday, 28th September 2005 Hello folks, I attended the first meeting last week and is a regular rail user. I commute daily from Chippenham to London Paddington and then onto Greenwich by tube. So I can vouch for the expensive rail costs! I have also used in the past services to Bath, Swindon and Clifton via Bristol Temple Meads and the Severn Beach line. At a time when fuel costs are increasing and the traffic on our roads is getting crowed, its time rail has a resurgance. I am not sure this campaign will get much as the Dft is proposing a lot of cuts, but I live in hope. keep up the good work, David Re: Hello - 28/39 Written by admin (Graham Ellis) on Thursday, 29th September 2005 Thanks, David. For sure, we're going to need some luck but then at times you can make your own luck, by ensuring you're in the right place and talking to the right people at the right time. Also giving folks who made decision "x" a route to switching to alternative "y" without having to do a U turn. We're helped by the fact that the bid request must have been based on figures for 2003 - 2004 or earlier, which is before ticket sales to / from Melksham jumped by 35% in 2004 - 2005, for example. And we're helped by the fact that there's scope in the process for later fine tuning as I understand it (and, no, I don't understand it fully). I'm gooing to make a few comments about parking / riding from Chippenham .... but I'll do that in a separate thread as it's of much more general interest; some good and interesting points have been pointed out! 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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