Great Western Coffee Shop

From Thursday (3rd October) - a log of how the TransWilts and Melkham Station are doing. The train on the Westbury Flier" was 158768; it's a duty which seems to be shared between 158s and turbos.

12:33 to Swindon ... 6 got off, 10 got on at Melksham, 34 on the train onwards - 40/16
17:35 return ... 60 on the train into Melksham, 2 more on, around 20 off - 62/22

I was well used, preCovid, to counting / observing train use.  It has evened out; middle of the dsy trains are vastly busier than they were. I can recall 20 rather than 40 passengers. But 62 on the aftrnoon train is a drop and it's worth considering why.

1. Changing pattern of travel? Evidence of other trains getting busier suggests that this is / has happened, with other trains getting busier even though the "peak" ones are quieter.

2. Drop in reliability of service?  Of the 20 people who got off the train, many walked away from the station.  One car was there to do a pickup.   And as I watched, others were calling on their phones and then several more cars appeared to give lifts.  I conjecture that the calls were made and people appeared to give lifts only once they knew that the passenger HAD made Melksham on that service.  Whether that's a service reliability issue or person plans that chsnge dsy by day I have no proof, but if it's personal plans changing, I would have expected that the calls could have been made earlier.

3. Loss of parking traffic?  The 18:00 arrival used to result in the station car park which had around 25 spaces and was nearly full at 17:50 seeing s flow of around 15 cars out and being nerly empty at 18:10.  There are now 50 spaces, but often only 2 cars parked there (3 or 4 on a good day). And not one car left the car park on Thursday after the 18:00 arrival.

I can only speak for myself, but chronic service unreliability is the one and only reason I now rarely use the train from Melksham. If I'm travelling out of the county, I will normally drive to Westbury where there's at least a sporting chance of getting back again.