Great Western Coffee Shop

Want to meet Santa?   He^ll be on the train on Sunday 13th December from Melksham.

Leaving Melksham at 14:45 and again at 16:45 - a journey of about an hour during which each child will meet Santa, receive a gift - and there^s minced pies and soft drinks for everyone too. Adults may swap their soft drinks for a complimentary glass of wine.  Please arrive at the station 10 minutes before your scheduled departure.

Tickets - to include your train fare, refreshments, and presents for the children - ^10 adult, ^5 children aged up to 15.    Tickets for sale at the Melksham Tourist Information Centre, Church Street - please book and pay there.    Numbers are limited, and once sold out ^ they^re sold out!

Free parking is available at Melksham Station, which is situated just off the A365 Bath Road.  Access from the town centre via subway under the A350, and from Melksham Forest via Scotland Road Bridge.

Organised by the Melksham Railway Development Group ^ working to bring more train and station improvements to Melksham.  The purpose of this trip is to promote train use and have a darned good time too; any profit will be used by the group to further improve and promote rail travel to / from Melksham.

http://twcrp.info/santa

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/santa2015advert.jpg)

Is that a SOO train? :-)

Are the tickets only available in person at Melksham TIC?

Yes ... that's the publicity.  Keeping in simple.   Except I'll inevitably end up holding a few back for people who can't make it to the TIC and giving them the tickets / collecting the money on the day.    Send me a p.m. anyone for that arrangement.

Pedantic possibly, but isn't the first train actually 14:50?  Or is 45 easier to market with the other train in mind?

I'm afraid it's a piece of marketing simplification which I should be ashamed of  :-\

Ticket sales for Santa - now visiting us for the 16th time in 17 years - have been a bit slower that usual this year.  And that's a topic I've raised with other community rail folks - partly to give me control / benchmark to compare to, and partly to help seed / grow their forum resource (somewhere that community rail experiences can be shared around the UK for our mutual benefit).

In following up with my analysis, I wrote something which perhaps could be useful here too - looking at changing flows - so I'm pasting a copy of what I wrote ...

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Santa is planned with modern things like risk assessments, backup strategies, etc ... with risks including train delays and cancellation, low booking numbers, santa feeling unwell, unbooked children being on the same train.  And over the years these things happen - last year, a signal failure delayed the service into Swindon so the layover in which Santa was to see the children in the "Grotto" (2nd waiting room!) disappeared. So - we actually have no problem even if we're somewhat lighter on numbers - the finances stack up and indeed we have the ultimate abiity to refund and stock presents until next year if the train gets cancelled; we then have a potential damage limitation exercise in the local press and social media, but that's another story.  Rather I'm interested in why it's been significantly slower to book this year - my earlier comments.

If - five years ago on Thursday - I had gone down to Melksham Station at a quarter past 4 in the afternoon, I would have found a deserted platform.  An old bus shelter.  A couple of notice boards giving train times Portsmouth to Cardiff which if I looked at carefully I would find that at 16:15 I had missed the soutbound train at 06:38 and the northbount train at 07:19, and that my next train was at 19:20 southbound or 19:48 northbound.  A dark blue box with a button marked "information" sometimes worked to make a phone call and play a recorded message to say that no trains were dur within the next 99 minutes.  I'm desribing a service which wasn't suitable for the typical town resident to use - even if they knew about it.

I went down to the station at around a quarter past 4 on the Thursday just gone. There were people round ... as they arrived, they checked the departure screen and some bought tickets from the machine, then waited on the platform, in the new, larger, lit shelter, in the enclosed cycle rack area (which doubles as another shelter, and - on time at around 16:30 a single car train rolls in.  4 people got off, 10 people got on and the train left with 43 passengers on board.   And I know that when it arrives on its return call (at 18:03) it will be full and standing - approaching "wedged".

With our improved service, people are now travelling by train - and in good numbers both off peak and peak, for both leisure and commuting (and business) journeys. There's a lot of puchchairs and children on the services at holiday times, weekends, and during the day - and I'll wager that many of these people are those who (or who's community) almost never used the train in past years, and from whom the group who were tempted by a train journey from their own town to see Santa was drawn.  As such, it's no bad thing at all - lovely having these people able to share and use the trains 363 days a year rather than just one ... just a need to do a bit more marketing of Santa than in the past. With the bonus that the Santa publicity can now remind people they have a useful service o other days too ...

I'm tempted NOT to grab out the snowy pictures which are all now pre-improvement (but thanks for that thought) - rather I have just turned the power up a notch or two on the marketing which has always been rather subdued to avoid oversubscription.  My risk anaysis for an overcrowded platform at Melksham station especially is a bit of a frightener which we, our TOC, and I hope others who may stop heritage trains there, are fully aware of.

Has Santa been rebranded?

Looking for something witty to say but, basically, no.

Over the years with changing services we've had to vary the product a bit - the day and destination has been dictated by where an out-and-back train trip has been fun. 

Before I was ever involved it went to Westbury on one occasion.

There was a Saturday trip in my early days where we went to Swindon in the morning (at around 09:20) and back on the train at about 3 p.m. after people had done their Christmas Shopping; that was memorable because there was concern about explosive devices at that time, and our arrangement to deposit a huge box of boxes of minced pies with station staff at Swindon hadn't been passed on to them ... problem solved by them choosing a random box and sampling the goods.   

Over recent years, it's been up to Swindon and back on a Sunday / late afternoon - for a number of years up to 2012 that was the only round trip possible without a layover of six hours or more.

2013 and 2014 we've gone up to Swindon, with a 30 minute layover there, and back and both have worked very well indeed.

For 2015, there's no layover in Swindon.   Thank goodness the Sunday service was sorted out (or almost so; it's 90% better - just one niggle left) in May - so it's even through the day.  But that correction for every other requirement means yet another slight change to Santa.   So it's two up-and-back trips of just over an hour each this year, with Santa on the train as he's done many times in the past, and with tickets slit between the two trains to give him a chance to get through, and to leave plenty of space on the service for regular passengers who are conspicuous by their presence rather than their absence these days.

We thought of rebranding Santa with a new name, suite colour and logo.  However, following the lead of GWR in adopting and following a well respected name from Victorian times, we're also using a well respected name from that era. "Santa" in his modern form, if Wikipedia is to be believed, can be traced back to 1863.

He's almost as old as Melksham Station (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melksham_railway_station) itself, then.  ;) :D ;D

Sorry Grahame I was only joking, absolutely no need to rebrand Santa........unlike First Group/First Great Western, his brand isn't poisonous or discredited!

Hope the numbers pick up for what I am sure will be a memorable occasion.

I know ... but you gave me an excellent step onto which to post a little history.    I expect my humour therein was so dry it wasn't noticeable  ;D

.....perhaps you could advise your regulars that over the next year you will be "Building a Greater Santa"? (.....try not to overspend or overrun though!!!)  ;)

To Father Christmas perhaps?

A couple of pictures from a successful Santa trip on Sunday ... a platform that was comfortably crowded, a 153 that was (on two runs) filled with guests attached to the regular train, and just under a dozen volunteers during the day - for both trips with Santa, and for passenger counts being conducted in parallel on all 5.5 return trips.  And with the numbers of childen we had, just about perfect for Santa to see them all without having to either rush or dally.

For us, the surrounding publicity and getting newcomers to use the train (and do so again) is just as important as the even itself - and little things confirmed to me that many of our customers on Sunday were new to train travel and to Melksham station where we started from.  Our main station car park is separated from the station by one other property, and standing at the entrance directing traffic in it was clearly somewhere that most of them had never been before. Many people 'amused' by single door operation as the platform isn't long enough for 2 x 153.   And again - many people delighted with the ticket wallets and minitimetables we were handing out on the return journey; a colurful and informative message to use the train - and the parallel bus services - right through to next May.

Presents provided by the local Toy Shop in Melksham, who are given free reign within a budget to select the right toys based on age and gender - they give us a good price, they know children far better than I / we do, and I suspect it helps them sell a final few odd toys at the end of batches that are looking lonely on their shelves.  Santa helped all around!

A big "thank you" to the Melksham TIC for selling the tickets, to the local press for the publicity, to Lisa for doing the posters, tickets, and booking sheets ... and also the ticket wallets, 2 year celebration cards and minitimetables themselves. Special mention for Peter and Margaret too, who donated adult drinks, and ran the "buffet" with them (hard on a 153!). And thanks to the whole team on the train, and to Great Western Railway for the extra carriage.

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Facebook after the event recorded a number of "Thank you"s and that really helps make it worthwhile.   Alas, there was also a single expression of disappointment (which the author must have thought better of because it was soon deleted) - but that certainly acts as a reminder that we should always be checking our publicity to make sure we're not overselling, and that we have the best product available.  At 10 pounds a head (adult) and 5 pound (children), with a 4 pound presnt budget, minced pies, soft drinks, train tickets ... we simply can't afford to hire a steam train, and health and safety preclude cab visits, taking over the tannoy system, or decorating the train in a way that could interfere with its operation of its return to normal service after the event. I have explained the issues to our brief critical complainer, explained the issues and invited her to help / bring along fresh ideas next year, when we'll probably run Santa on the final Sunday of our 3 year trial service.

For the next week, I've switched images at the top of the CoffeeShop pages to a series of pictures taken on the TransWilts "Santa Special" trips.

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With a HUGE "Thank You" to all the volunteers (pictured and not who helped on the day, and over the weekend with counts)

Indeed: many thanks to everyone who helped on Santa's train journeys - I'm sorry I wasn't able to join you.  ;)