Great Western Coffee Shop

I'm not too sure how happy I amount about the Community Rail Poster at Melksham (which was advertising the local service, and with an update panel giving details of Santa's calls on the line on 14th December being replaced by an advert for the Dunster Candle Service Special on 6th December.

As I understand it, the Dunster service doesn't come any nearer to us than Bristol, it gets back so late that there aren't any connections to Melksham where it was being advertised, and in any case it's been cancelled now. Seems an odd thing to have advertised in Melksham in the first place, due to lack of connections. If there is a connection to something like this I'm totally in favour.

On Santa ...
The 13:15 from Westbury to see Santa (13:20 from Trowbridge, 13:30 from Melksham) is SOLD OUT.
The 16:15 from Westbury to see Santa (16:20 from Trowbridge, 16:30 from Melksham) has between 10 and 20 tickets remaining from each station - available from the tourist information / visitors centres in the town you're planning to join at.
Adults ^9, Children ^5, trip duration 2 to 2.5 hours

I'm very close to the Santa trip and CRP as one of the active helpers, so sometimes don't take an objective as view as I should.  Am I right to be a bit surprised at the prioritisation of an impractical Dunster over the local trip and service?

Dunsterby candlelight still be advertised on the FGW website but that doesn't surprise me.

Edit: just seen BNM's post regards it still being on the website.

I, too, am rather disappointed that posters promoting the ongoing local services on the TransWilts line have apparently been replaced by First Great Western to try to publicize a completely unrelated service which has already been cancelled.

I have a railway station poster cabinet key (quite legitimately, through my work with Community Rail Partnerships!) and if I lived a bit nearer to Melksham, I'd simply go and remove that irrelevant poster now.  >:(

I took have access to that cabinet ... but rather felt I was too close to "just do". No panic over a few hours;  I'll email the area manager in the a.m. and offer to take it down  ;)

Still on the FGW website. Surprised? No.

The problem with most rail publicity is that it is usually at rail stations and is therefore talking to the converted, i.e. existing rail users.
I find that most non-rail users never seem to have heard of ny new rail services.

Changed - to TransWilts Folk Train advert


Agreed ... the TransWilts poster and information is there largely to remind existing users of the presence of an active user group and to give them news.    For non-transwilts-rail users we have many other marketing approaches, most of which don't involve adverts at the station.

Very true, we usually get negative publicity for FGW in our local papers. However, most steam or other special trains from stations in the TV run by Steam Dreams etc. have quite large adverts in the same paper.