From a shuttle towards a service

We're getting to have a proper train service on the TransWilts!

On Thursday evening, I left on a business trip on the 18:47 ... and when we were pulled into the platform at Chippenham, across the platform from us was the Southampton train, also via the TransWilts line. This morning, on the 08:36 from Swindon, a 2 car train coming up from Westbury pulled in to Chippenham just as we pulled out.

When we have a couple of trains around, are they busy enough? Well - the 18:47 on Thursday dropped off 9 people and picked up 4 more at Melksham, and 10 people were left on the train to Chippenham. That's 19/13 . And this morning, the train left Chippenham a couple of minutes before 9 a.m. with 23 passengers on board; five got off and 3 got on at Melksham - for the stats, 26/8 . Yes, that's a reasonable load for those particular trains ... especially when you consider that the main flow is morning toward Swindon and evening back, and the trains I have counter are contra-flow; I would be almost certain that the trains we passed would have been much busier; that's confirmed by a report (and yes, I saw it) of parking running out at Melksham station this morning. And we're a pretty green station, with most people walking to / from ...

The more I observe, the more convinced I am that gap-fillers would not only work in terms of having traffic up to a good level, but ask that they would generate significant extra traffic with minimal abstraction from previous / next trains. In particular, the Monday -> Friday southbound gap from 15:14 to 17:36 off Swindon could do with being plugged, as could the 07:48 to 10:03 morning gap (Melksham times given) up to Swindon.

We have a discussion ongoing at the moment in the TransWilts Member area of this forum about what could be done with the unit that form the 16:24 arrival and then the 17:54 departure at Swindon on the Stroud Valley line, and the unit that arrives in Westbury at 16:33 from Bristol Parkway and leaves at 17:11 for Warminster, passing back at 17:38 on its way back to Bristol Parkway. Although we have some 130 minutes of idle "unit time", fuel levels, paths, staff rotas, robustness, where train can turn, where the freight and "Q" trains are, all have to be aligned to make anything operationally useful of it - a far from easy thing. On its own / prior to the extra LSTF^▸ services, this was looked at and put into the "very difficult, and insufficient to make enough of a service to be worthwhile" ... but now that the LSTF services are doing so well, perhaps it's more "very difficult, but worth doing".

In the morning, the 08:12 Bristol to Swindon sits in Swindon from 09:04 to 09:38, and in the past we have wondered about adding extra stops at Bradford-on-Avon (08:42) and Melksham (09:02 ish). Although that's made easier by the addition of reversal facilities at Bradford Junction, such a service would now clash with the 08:48 (but please make it 08:36) Swindon to Westbury. So with existing stock, that has moved from "difficult and insufficient" to "impossible but worth doing". Oh the irony!