Great Western Coffee Shop

A demonstration this evening of just how awful the Saturday public transport services to Melksham are ... travelling from Taunton at 17:00, I will be getting home at 21:00.

Six days a week, but not Saturday, the 19:32 from Westbury would have been my choice - connecting off the train that leaves Taunton at around 18:30; two buses from Chippenham and three buses from Trowbridge were withdrawn in August "for the vehicles to be used on rail replacement" but although they were paid for by Wiltshire Council, they haven't come back.  I understand that there are contractual issues on this - but not sure what; different stories depending on who I talk to.

There is a train at 20:10 - and another later one - from Chippenham.  Actually the'ye my second and third choices - a long, long wait, and no connection home - I'm no longer able to do the walk after a long day.  So my choice is the bus from Bath.   I had hoped to catch the 18:30, but as the train arrived into Bath at 18:33, the bus ran to time for once.   Next bus - rounc the houses at 20:00 but at least one of the sets of houses it goes around is ours ...

Running out of battery here at Bath Bus station, where WiFi is available when there's an enabled bus on stand ...

I'm really sorry to read that, grahame. :o

For the information of our members, grahame and I both attended the TravelWatch SouthWest meeting in Taunton today.  After that meeting, and having enjoyed a quick pint in The Plough public house (more on that elsewhere ;)), grahame left Taunton at 17:00.  I left Taunton an hour later, at 18:07 on the train to Nailsea & Backwell, and I arrived home at 19:15.

I now feel some annoyance at the situation where grahame should similarly be tucked up at home by now, not having to wait around in Bath for the next available bus.  :o

Ironically, one of the many issues raised and discussed in detail at the TravelWatch SouthWest meeting today was the lack of co-ordination between bus and train services - even within the same group of companies. ::)

I don't know about the difference in ticket prices but an option would be the 17:50 off Taunton via BRI and CPM arriving MKM at 20:01.

I miss-read the timetable ... noted the time the train arrived at Westbury not Melksham ... so the 17:50 would have worked and got me to Melksham just after 20:00.  On the basis of "First available train", I took the 17:07 ... tried for the zero time bus connection (271/272 is always late except when you want it to be!) ... and at that point I preferred to wait for the next bus rather than the train marginally (or a little more than marginally as it turns out) earlier , but a l-o-n-g way across the town.


Home now  ;D ... quite hardened to this.   After all, I lived in Melksham when there were just 2 trains each wet per day

These days the various journey planners are my lifeline. With an infrequent bus and train service I now have to plan my journeys so I'm not sitting for ages on a platform somewhere. I quite often find that the journey planners will give me different routes to get to the same place. Not necessarily a choice of routes but if I leave at a particular time I'll need to go via X, If I go an hour later I may need to change at Y instead.

Sorry to hear about your strife, Graham.  I must say even when there appears to be a robust and frequent train service, it is only when you get down to actually using it that you realise its weaknesses.  Returning from Paignton yesterday I had to kill 55 minutes for a connection to Yatton at Taunton, on top of a 20 minute wait at Exeter.  The train in the opposite direction was a through one and took about 2hrs 10.  Coming back it was 3hrs 20min.  True I didn't have to resort to a bus and it is good that the services are regular to Yatton even til quite late. It's the connections that are nearly always the issue for anything other than the main hubs.

When I mentioned the timings to someone who never considers public transport, I was patronisingly smiled at as being eccentric for even thinking about it.  ::)

We clearly need to get you along to the next TravelWatch SouthWest meeting, trainer.  ;)

Excellent advise.   An integration with real time information so that it knows about any delays / cancellations and can allow for them (sometimes a delay is a gained connection and makes a journey quicker) and the fares system (to tell you what to to with your tickets) would be Utopia.


Indeed - it's often the connections.   To me (personally) they're less of a problem than they used to be; I remember n my childhood getting REALLY bored waiting half an hour (I was a bit impatient).   But these days, I have a laptop and stuff to do, I will take a break as an opportunity to eat and drink - and of course the time taken to observe helps educate me into how things work, and that helps here and with associated transport activities.

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The TransWilts service introduced in December 2013 didn't have connections as the highest of priorities.   First was finding paths for the trains without upsetting anything else.   Second was operationally keeping the trains separate from other trains so that they can be withdrawn when they don't sell with minimal fuss.  Third was to make them operationally easy.  Fourth was to get the timings such that they provided the best possible timings for the peak on the busiest forecast peak flow.  Fifth was to put in a nice even(isn) service after (4). And sixth was making connections work.   That may seem / sound a bit unfair, but there's logic to it.    It's no lack of wanting connections to work - it's just other priorities and then see what falls out.

I'm very happy to report some changes now that the service has proven itself.  In particular "keeping it operationally separate" has faded, and the Sunday service - on which this causes some real funnies - has been integrated with the existing trains allowing us to step up from a three-hourly service to a two-hourly.   It's also allowed a service to carry on to Frome to help fill a gap there.

From December, a departure just 2 minutes earlier form Swindon (15:14 to 15:12) makes for a much faster journey, the train now arriving in Westbury ahead of rather than behind the Portsmouth Harbour train.  Operationally, it adds a shunt. Connection wise it gains an hour on Chippenham - Salisbury journeys.  Excellent! .  No change though to the 08:49 from Swindon on Monday to Friday which we would like to see back to 08:36 (as it is on Saturday); one assumes that the MOD or their agents still require that path for the VERY occasional train ...