As an aside, grahame could experience the light show experience in Dovey daily, AND finally end that search for his railway retirement home by buying his
very own farm just 1 mile away from Dovey Junction!
9.5 Acres is a bit much for us ... and whilst I grant you that passenger numbers at Dovey Junction are reported at around 4,500 per annum (rather more that the 3,000 that the
ORR» told me for Melksham when I first enquired how busy the line was), I think it would be a tough call to get passenger numbers like we have in Melksham. "Travel to Swindon for shopping or to work" has bigger mass transport potential than "come to Dovey Junction to see the Ospreys".
Of course, another way of looking at it would be that Dovey Junction currently has 10 direct services per weekday to Shrewsbury, which while not quite having as big a population as Swindon, is nonetheless the commercial centre for Shropshire and mid-Wales, with a pre-Covid retail output of over £299 million per year. By comparison, Melksham currently has 9 services per weekday to Swindon.
Also, 8 of those 10 services per weekday from Dovey Junction to Shrewsbury extend through to Birmingham. By contrast, Go-op's proposal from around a decade ago which would have seen some direct services from Melksham to Birmingham was widely ridiculed, and current aspirations for such services only exist as an option of a
2019 consultants report which appears to have little or no prospect of being implemented any time soon, despite apparently being a "High scoring option addressing a wide variety of issues".
Finally, there are also 8 direct services from Dovey Junction on Monday-Saturdays to the popular seaside resort of Pwllheli, and 5 on Sundays. Melksham however, despite many attempts of varying effectiveness over the years, currently only has 1 direct service each way per week to the popular seaside resort of Weymouth.
It is when reminded of such comparisons that I am also reminded of the huge importance of continuing to back the efforts of grahame and others to progress their local and regional transport proposals, and I am proud to do so. It's been 15 years since the Save The Train campaign was formed, 10 years since the TransWilts Community Rail Partnership came into existence, 5 years since Option 24/7 was born, and in a couple of years time we will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of the introduction of what was then just about an appropriate TransWilts Rail service. The fact that - aside from a handful of very welcome individual service improvements - the overall structure of the TransWilts timetable today does not look all that much different from the one that was introduced back then means that it is a case of "Much to be proud of, but much still to be achieved".
Anyway, I have taken this topic somewhat far away from Bow Street, so I will leave it there
Click on the map to explore geographics
