Save the Train

* Overview / Background

Swindon - Chippenham - Melksham - Trowbridge - Westbury - Dilton Marsh - Warminster - Salisbury train service. Nurtured from 2001 to 2006, with ticket sales at Melksham up eight fold. Latest annual passenger count - 120000.

Slashed back last December to just 2 trains a day, Estimated passengers for 2007 - 7000 (that's just 6% of the numbers who used it last year).

* Origins

Founded - August 2005. A Web site, as a result of seeing a letter in the local paper which said "do you realise you have missed the consultation for 2007 train services".

* Objectives

1. To bring the case for an appropriate train service connection the five major population centres of Wiltshire to the serious attention of those able to specify, finance and provide such a service.

2. To have the case seriously and fully evaluated in order to establish what an appropriate service actually comprises.

3. To work for the provision of such an appropriate service (includes service level, timing, pricing, reliability,booking arrangements, publicity, comfort)

4. To work for the retention of that service once achieved, and of any lesser service prior to that point both as at least some service to the curent customers, and as a stepping stone to the future.

* Outcomes

First objective (known). When we came to the case, the TransWilts service was two sentences in the middle of 100 page SRA report covering Paddington to Pembroke Dock to Penzance. Now it (and the town of Melksham, served only by the line) are much better known.

Second Objective (looked at). From an initial reaction which verged on the "don't be silly and ask for more that 2 trains a day" we moved forward to a very serious proposal for 5 a day from this December - DfT, County Council and First all on board, as confirmed by FOI. And the County Council has concluded that an appropriate level of service would be hourly each way.

Third Objective (implemented). No. Not acheived. The detailed proposals that we were almost-promised ("just needs to be signed off by Network Rail") at a public meeting in May disappeared from the draft timetable from this coming December; reasons not totally clear to me.

Fourth Objective (retention and lesser goals). We strongly suspect that in August 2006 when the service was withdrawn for 10 days that it would have returned as a bus ... as per current precedents in Staffordshire and Watford. However, publicity and activities including a gathering of VIPs on the station before six in the morning resulted in the appearance of a smarter-than-normal service.

A new southbound service, operated on a commercial basis by First Great Western, starts early on a Sunday evening in December. It's just one train a week, but it's at a time that it plugs a real hole and it's significant in demonstrating goodwill and being commercial.

Train cancellations remain a serious issue (to the extent that First have installed a special bus stop labelled "Rail Replacement services" at Trowbridge station), but we're no longer in the same class as the 07:10 Bristol to Paddington which is cancelled on around 25% of the time.

Early Morning buses from Melksham, and evening buses back, now make calls at the railway station in Chippenham. After an unbelievably hard struggle, the bus stop at the station now carries the times of those buses. They are clearly used, judging by the complaints from Chippenham taxi drivers that fares to Melksham have dried up

* Ongoing

We beleive that we have an excellent chance of moving towards an appropriate service from May or December 2008. Please add YOUR support.

http://www.savethetrain.org.uk • 01225 708225 • Graham Ellis - 1.11.07


Save The Train

Swindon - Chippenham - Melksham - Trowbridge - Salisbury - the five largest urban centres in Wiltshire, with major growth (50% over next 20 years) under regional spatial strategy, congested roads causing major delays to buses and cars, heavy commuter flows.

A train service of 5 each way each day, with growth rates between 10% and 35% compound per annum (depending on measurment used) was slashed back to two round trips each day last December - setting off at 06:19 and 18:42, using the "marginal time" of a train off another line. It's Crazy!

A presentation for the Rail User's National Conference, 3.11.2007 by Graham Ellis - "Save the Train" Campaign, Wiltshire

Trowbridge to Swindon by train - 35 minutes (but ONLY at 07:06 or 19:40)
Trowbridge to Swindon by "EXPRESS" bus - 95 minutes

or


How can YOU help?

I understand that my Audience includes Mr Bob Breakwell, a non Executive Director of First Great Western. "And Finally" I would like to encourage Mr Breakwell, who has many years of experience of running train services along rapidly growing corridors such as ours, to offer his full support within the FGW board to our case for an appropriate train service as now defined by his Regional Managaer, County Council, and civil servants such as the Franchise Manager Peter West at the DfT.

To any of you who live within the First Great Western area, can I ask that you visit our forum and post at least once - there are sheets available with the URL for you to take away, and the more strenght of numbers and experts we have to had so that we can work with FGW to make things work for the passengers as well as the government and their shareholders, the better.

See http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/

For everyone, please visit our "Save the Train" web site. You'll find TransWilts information a'plenty - also the full draft of this. And you'll find a "Greater Britain" board too where topics updated in the last 2 days include PWQs, Kelly calls for Transport debate, Midland Mainline strikes, impacts of passenger numbers on underground services, Glasgow Airport and the Port of Liverpool freight link.

See http://www.savethetrain.org.uk/forum/index.php

Graham Ellis,
Save the Train
404, The Spa, Melksham, Wiltshire, SN12 6QL
graham@wellho.net

1st November 2007

This page - http://www.savethetrain.org.uk/national/ho2.html
More detailed report - http://www.savethetrain.org.uk/national/ho1.html
Full presentation - http://www.savethetrain.org.uk/national/index.html