Great Western Coffee Shop

February 7th ... the TransWilts CRP AGM, and also a visit by Baroness Kramer, Minister of State for Transport at the Department for Transport to Wiltshire, to see projects at Westbury station that were lead by the Heart of Wessex / West Wilts Rail User Group, and to visit the TransWilts line and help launch the new service.

Annual General Meeting

The TransWilts AGM had been long planned for that date, and we decided to carry on with the AGM, hosted by Wiltshire Council at County Hall in Trowbridge, rather that split the events onto two days.

AGM papers - http://atrebatia.info/review_2014_02_01.pdf
AGM draft minutes - http://atrebatia.info/TWCRP_AGM_070214.pdf

Key meeting decisions:

a) The current officers (Sion Bretton, Chair; Phil McMullen, Secretary; Chris Hankin, Treasurer, Peter Blackburn, Vice Chair; and Graham Ellis, Press and Publicity) were re-elected en-bloc, with all in favour.

b) Graham Ellis presented the business plan to the meeting. This would form part of the group^s application to membership of ACoRP, along with the Constitution. There were no questions raised on the business plan.

c) To present and consider application to join ACoRP. Peter Blackburn proposed and Sion Breton seconded a motion that the TWCRP apply for ACoRP membership. All present were in favour of the proposal. There were no abstentions.

d) Next AGM - 6th February 2015, venue to be advised.

The application to join ACoRP has been submitted, and followed up by our initial year's fee (no doubt the cheque will be returned if our membership is not approved) and a package containing examples of our work.  Quite an impressive set of the results of some 16 different activities, and most of them very recent too - we really have been busy bunnies these last couple of months supporting the service that's now running on the line ... getting more passengers onto it.

I travelled today, (Saturday) on the 17:36 from Swindon to Melksham.  I admit I was concerned at the lonely and empty 153 that was sitting at Platform 1 at about 17:25, but it seemed like from no-where passengers arrived and there were 20 on board a few minutes later when it pulled out.  4 got off at Chippenham, but another 12 (!) got on ... and then 11 got off and 2 got on at Melksham.   So that's a count of 30 different individual passengers using the service between Chippenham and Trowbridge ... and above the average set as a target for - err - year 2.  And, yes, this service is at least twice as busy on a Monday to Friday.

Anyway - it looks like our activities, and work alongside FGW and Wiltshire Council, and with events like the visit of Baroness Kramer from the Department for Transport are helping fill trains, so I am hopeful that ACoRP's 5th March meeting will take a positive view.