Great Western Coffee Shop

Hi,

I'm making a blog for Wiltshire stations and halts past and present and I was wondering if anyone could give an indication of what the level of service would have been like back before the melksham line was dismantled and left with one track and before the halts in wiltshire were closed etc

Were there more trains? As many people using them?

Here is the blog if anyone is interested:

http://wiltshire-railway.blogspot.com/ (http://wiltshire-railway.blogspot.com/)

Sounds like a good idea, and I will see what I can dig out.

In any case, I will be interested to see how it turns out.

Excellent, anything you can find out will be very much appreciated  ;D if you want to contribute or have any suggestions etc I will of course put your name on the list of contributers.

Drew,

To be fair, a couple of afternoons spent in the local library would answer most of your questions, Drew. I'd certainly recommend the excellent 'Wiltshire Railway Stations' by Mike Oakley (ISBN 1-904349-33-1) as that is strong on text and detail, compared to many publications which tend to be little more than glorified photo albums. Vic Mitchell & Keith Smith's 'Branch Lines of West Wiltshire' (ISBN 1-904474-128) is largely an example of the latter, although there are a couple of pages putting everything into context. Dale's 'Wiltshire's Lost Railways' (Stenlake Publishing 2002) and CG Maggs' 'Branch Lines of Wiltshire' (Sutton, 1992) are also useful.

Though I confess I couldn't find passenger levels in the limited time available to me, I was able to identify service levels fairly quickly. Melksham for example closed originally to passengers on 18th April 1966. It had ostensibly already closed to freight on 2nd November 1964, but as we know the stone trains continued to trundle through (and still do to this day). The line was singled on 24th February 1967. Melksham station reopened on 13th May 1985, the first station in the post-Beeching UK to do so, but appearing as a mere shadow of its former self.

The number of trains calling at Melksham down the years tells its own sorry tale.

Weekdays / Sundays

1850: 6 / 2
1869: 5 / 1
1889: 7 / 1
1909: 13 / 2
1929: 13 / 2
1949: 14 / 5
1965: 8 / 1
1985: 4 / 0
1988: 2 / 0
1989: 1 / 0
2001: 5 / 1 (I think?)
2007: 2 / 2

That information for Melksham is brilliant  ;) Thanks for looking that up. I am just about to create the Melksham page, if anyone has any suggestions or if I have made a mistake with reference to any information please let me know and I will correct it.

What does everyone think of the blog so far?

Good so far!  ;)

Although I have spotted a few "alot"s!