| Archived Save the Train forum articles - 2005 to 2010. See below
An example of what could be done with a bit of imagination... - 7748/12471 Written by Industry Insider on Thursday, 29th May 2008 It struck me that there are two areas of the current timetable which could do with improving upon. 1) Westbury (an increasingly busy junction station and terminus of any enhanced TransWilts service that may come to pass) and Pewsey have a very irregular pattern of trains to London. 2) Maidenhead is a very busy station (ranked 74th busiest in the UK) - which has a branch connection to Bourne End and Marlow. and although it has 4 trains an hour off-peak to London they are all painfully slow - taking nearly 40 minutes for the 23 mile journey. I've spent a bit of spare time looking at these problems and tackled them both with a proposed timetable that replaces the current hourly off-peak Turbo service from Paddington-Bedwyn, with an Adelante operated service between Paddington and Westbury (and occiasionally Frome) which stops at Maidenhead. I'm not expecting it to ever come to anything as FGW are off-loading all their Adelantes by the end of the year, but I though I'd share it with forum readers to show the huge benefits over the current service to these destinations. It is a full weekday timetable which includes pathing around other services (virtually nothing would have to change) and also indicative diagramming of Turbo and Adelante units to show what resources would be required. The link to download it is: [url]http://www.savefile.com/projects/808644282[/url] My apologies for any pop-ups, but that is a necessary evil when using free file hosters! Re: An example of what could be done with a bit of imagination... - 7748/12472 Written by Lee on Thursday, 29th May 2008 Some excellent work there, Industry Insider. I've been working on similar stuff (albeit over a wider area) aimed at when the franchise next comes up for renewal. Assuming the various capacity enhancements/reopenings go ahead, the links below contain some of what I have come up with so far : http://www.raildocuments.org.uk/gwfuture/londoncornwall.xls http://www.raildocuments.org.uk/gwfuture/exmouthbarnstaple.xls http://www.raildocuments.org.uk/gwfuture/liskeardlooe.xls http://www.raildocuments.org.uk/gwfuture/plymouthstaustell.xls http://www.raildocuments.org.uk/gwfuture/sterthstives.xls http://www.raildocuments.org.uk/gwfuture/trurofalmouth.xls NOTES : - These should be treated as winter timetables. I recommend summer expresses for Newquay, along with additional services for the Looe (utilising Moorswater Park & Ride) and Falmouth (utilising the Penryn loop) branches. - Cornish branch line connections are focused on providing links to/from Plymouth, the Okehampton timetable connections are focused on providing links to/from Exeter, and the Barnstaple timetable connections are focused on providing links to/from Taunton, Plymouth & London. - The proposals very much concur with the RPC "Western Advance" concept, with standard pattern timetables providing improved services and encouraging greater usage. - I support the Lostwithiel-Fowey passenger service concept, but would need further info on the line before providing a service option. 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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