Great Western Coffee Shop

Letter from FGW Customer Relations, it's bad news I'm afraid. :(

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Dear Graham,

Thank you again for your email regarding rail services in Wiltshire. As promised by
Andrew Haines in his reply I can now update you on progress. 

We had hoped that we could organise an additional service through Wiltshire serving
Melksham in particular. We looked very carefully at all the options, but whilst the
plan received good support, and remains something we want to do, the cost of the new
service is considerable. It will not be covered by the revenue that the service will
generate, and as a commercial organisation we can only therefore proceed if we can
find some joint funding to offset the costs. Despite our efforts this has to not
proved possible to date, and we will not be able to offer any extra services in the
next timetable due out in December.

We will continue to discuss the plans with stakeholders and will keep looking for a
partner to help finance the service, but this will not be possible before the
December 2009 timetable (at the earliest).

Thank you again for your interest and I am sorry that I do not have better news.

Yours sincerely

Leigh Owen
Customer Services Advisor

I got much the same e-mail.

I'm still concerned the focus is blinkered on serving Melksham when there are plenty of other trememdous benefits this service will bring. For example, I don't go to Melksham, but an increase in trains from Frome or Warminster to Westbury would bring a big benefit to me.

A reply to Leigh and Andrew Haines is on it's way...

Edit: Would you mind if, when I finish, you could post the e-mail on CANBER, Lee? It tries to explain the other benefits the TransWilts would bring and I think I did a pretty good job! ;)

Now, don't get me wrong, but I'm going to say the same thing every time a set back happens.

Serving Melksham (just forget the fact there are benefits for other stations for the moment) is operationally very difficult for the West fleet - and a HST could not 'easily' serve it (although I think inroads should be made to trying to run the 0640 Bristol to London from Castle Cary via Trowbridge... but anyway.

I think it's time to start lobbying Wiltshire CC as well as FGW themselves.

Send me a copy and I'll put it up there.


Dont worry, we have been lobbying Wiltshire CC, and will continue to do so.....

Not really doing much though at the moment is it? ;)

Whilst passenger numbers are rising elsewhere, why allocate the stock to a line with awful loadings?

WCC do very little at the best of times. There are many good words in the local transport plan, which an adequate Transwilts service would substantially underpin the objectives.

http://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/ltp2-vision-objectives.pdf

At the moment they hell bent on building a bypass the wrong side of Westbury and allowing the building of a waste processing plant on the opposite side of the town to the cement factory which will actually use the output. Completely ludicrous.

Grahame's point is that it wouldn't have awful loadings if it was run properly.

Most definatly true, but the stock is still needed elsewhere. One of the transwilts workings is booked for a 158. A total WASTE of stock designed for a well loaded line!!

Only awful loadings because the current timings are so awful- it'd happen on any other line should a service be introduced that is as bad as the service is on the TW. The line has -tons- of potential if a decent service was run!

Perhaps lower capacity stock could be introduced to begin with until passenger confidence grows once again.

I have seen a picture (it was at the top of the page in the banner 2 months ago) with crowds boarding a train at Melksham. Lightly used?

And how many times FGW/NR/DfT:

A RAILWAY IS A PUBLIC SERVICE, NOT A PROFIT MAKING ORGANISATION. IT SHOULD NOT HAVE TO BE PROFITABLE IN ALL AREAS.

Ditto for Post Offices, Royal Mail etc.

Wasn't that picture taken during the high summer prior to the service cuts? Or was it the Father Christmas special.


A railway is a public service, and at least a break even organisation. It should be able to make a profit in order to further invest those profits into the railway itself - which is not what happens at the moment but what should happen. Either way, the railway needs to make a profit to survive in this climate.

Pulled in by the propoganda I see Mr Btline  ;)

As swlines states, it was a christmas special, and is always busy. Needless to say, a picture of the normal service would be more appropriate to provide a balanced argument (considering the FGWCS has no apparent loyalties towards STT (the name would suggest so at least))

A lost opportunity as far as I am concerned. Wish I could say I'm surprised by the decision but I'm not. I can only say that I feel for all those who use the line and have campaigned for improvements.

My view :

tramway posted a link to the Wiltshire County Council local transport plan objectives, and interestingly, it lists as one of its specific geographic economic priorities....


I personally believe that Graham has always made a strong and believeable strategic & economic case for a proper TransWilts rail service. Some might call that propaganda, but putting such a case is an integral part of what a campaign does.

On a related note, we do listen to people if they have concerns about "over-exposure" of the TransWilts issue, and the decision to feature different campaigns as part of the banner is partly a result of such feedback. The TransWilts issue does, however, deserve to be raised on the Coffee Shop forum as a legitimate FGW-related matter for fair and balanced debate, and indeed we are currently having such a debate in this topic  ;D

Getting back to the matter at hand, the problem as I see it is that, as a result of the December 2006 slashing of the service, it will (as Graz points out) take some time for passenger levels & confidence to return. As a result, the DfT arent interested in funding a proper service, FGW (partly as a result of how the current system encourages short-term thinking) wont take the risk, and Wiltshire County Council's view appears to be that its nothing to do with them.

This is very great shame all round, given my genuine belief in the enormous future potential the route has.

My thoughts are that someone should, perhaps, look into applying to the ORR for an open access application.

It is indeed very disappointing news, though not unexpected.  If you think you have a 50% chance of success (and I felt it was up to that at one point) it also means you have a 50% chance of not being successful, and where there's a system, a geography, and key player(s) who's heart(s) really isn't/aren't into it, you have a problem.

Would such a service pick up enough of the London - Bristol revenue by virtue of the Chippenham to Swindon leg to make it viable to an Open Access Operator. Presumably it would also cream off a lot of the revenue of those buying tickets from Melksham to Bristol but actually starting elsewhere?

I was thinking this earlier, the same can be said for journeys to and from stations potentially covered by, but not actually on the line, e.g. Southampton to Stroud to give an example. It makes it trickier in this case that the Transwilts has so many connection possibilities! Also, if an Open Access Operator were to operate presumably this would just mean Westbury to Swindon rather than Salisbury to Swindon, which in my view would remove key benefits the services from Salisbury would bring (Though I of course would still much welcome a fairly frequent Westbury-Swindon service than the current situation)

No Open Access TOC would operate such an unprofitable route. The fact that the DfT, FGW and Wiltshire County Council fail to fund the trans wilts spells it out quite clearly to me...

Grand Central.

But if FGW runs it they don't get any ORCATs benefit. An OA operator may find that it is profitable by virtue of the revenue it would take from FGW. Though they wouldn't mention that in any submission of course!

Some clarifications

a) The pictures used are a mixture - showing trains such as the servive that used to arrive in Swindon at around 17:30, the one that used to leave there at 17:45, the 09:12 arrival at Melksham, Bank Holiday trains, the 05:45 from Westbury, and also some of the Saturday on which the Santa traip ran and some current pictures.  Naturally, they show the Santa trip as the busiest, and the current pictures with no trains due as the quietest.

b) I can't recall that there has been a serious call that a service must be 158 based; where a current service is provided (at all!) it is in marginal time, which means that FGW don't actually want the train for use anywhere else at that time of day. Any train at appropriate times would be great!

c) The DfT does as part of the franchise finance the TransWilts and their specification was intended to provide a decently timed peak commuter service into Swindon and back, and an extra train which (presumably) was supposed to be of some use to passengers wishing to travel.  They have been "taken to the cleaners" on this as they have ended up financing a service that First are running at a poor time for commuters, and another round trip which is at First's conveneince and not at the time that it would be best run.    Wiltshire County Council have not been looking at the case on merit, but on principle that they do not fund trains; it's not the case for the line that they're judging it on and were the line in almost any other county, the story would be a different one.

d) ORCAT works both ways.   It is in FGW's interest to run extra trains on lines that it shares elsewhere in the franchise area to get a greater share of the revenue for that line that passenger numbers strictly justifies.   I can find you at least one example where a unit makes a significant income because of ORCATs that's far in excess of the real number of passengers carried, and where it doubles up someone else's service.

You cannot base judgements for the future of the service on current ridership; to do so plays right into the hands of the worst of the Beeching time, where servicves were intentionally run at unusable times to engineer evidence to show they were not required.