TransWilts trains run Swindon - Chippenham - Melksham - Trowbridge - Westbury with some extensions Dilton Marsh - Warminster - Salisbury - Romsey - Southampton Central.
A massive passenger flow from Melksham is to Bath and Bristol. By train, passengers change at either Chippenham or Trowbridge, and double back onto London to Bristol (via Chippenham) services, or Portsmouth / Weymouth / Local to Bristol / Cardiff (via Trowbridge) services.
There used to be curves in place at Lacock (known as Lacock or Thingley West Curve) and to the north of Trowbridge (known as Bradford North Curve) which allowed direct running from Melksham to Bath. Map:
Lacock curve in blue
Bradford curve in orange
x - current station (shown with industry 3 letter code)
| - foreseeable station at a future date
The
Lacock curve was a wartime addition which allowed freight traffic from the south to be marshalled / stabled at Lacock sidings - to the north of Melksham - until required at the defence facilities at Corsham. It was taken out of service after the second world war, with many other facilities that were no longer required in peacetime.
The
Bradford curve survived until 1990 - that is until AFTER Melksham station had been re-opened in 1985. Until the Beeching era, there were through train services from London to Bristol via the Berks and Hants, Devizes, Holt Junction (just to the south of Melksham), around the curve to Bradford-on-Avon, then on to Bath and Bristol. There was also a weekday commuter train from Melksham via Bradford on Avon to Bath Spa and Bristol prior to Melksham's 1966 closure. After 1966, the curve was little used and it was removed in 1990 when the Westbury area was resignalled - stories differ as to why; one story suggests that the people planning the new signalling forgot about it, a second that there was no power available for the points at the west junction and it was uneconomic to provide it, and the third suggestion is than with sectorisation, no sector would take responsibility for it.
Today, the
Lacock curve is largely forgotten about through the path can be very clearly seen along field boundaries from a satellite picture, and there's no apparent building, road crossings, dropped bridges along the way. The Bradford curve is also very clear to see, again without any apparent obstacles to relaying a track; the old trackbed is used as a track for (road) vehicle access - I suspect for rail land purposes.
With the coming of a second local train per hour from Bristol via Bath comes a question "where does it turn round?". Bathampton, Westbury, Frome, Chippenham, Swindon and Oxford have all been mentioned. With the Lacock curve re-instated, further attractive options might open up (and it would act as an enabler for Corsham station too, proving a local service passing through the site). But lets park that idea and look at the other curve.
There has been a great deal of interest in re-opening the
Bradford Curve. Indeed, the re-instatement of the curve for diverted London to Bristol expresses during 'electrification' works on Box tunnel was actually in the plans, but the re-instatement was replaced by the cheaper option of changing the signalling at the existing Bradford Junction so that multiple unit trains can now be reversed there, away from any station.
There is little doubt of the strong passenger flows from Melksham to Bath and Bristol, and subsidiary flows from Chippenham to Bradford-on-Avon, which a regular service along a Bradford Curve could enable. And - should electrification work be resumed on the direct line through Box tunnel from Chippenham to Bath Spa, and at times of engineering diversion, it would also be useful. However, as things stand it would pour heavier demand than the single line from the Trowbridge area up to Chippenham can cope with. We already have reliability issues when trains are diverted or running late through Melksham, and adding in more services without significant line investment would make things worse.
A suggestion that existing Swindon to Westbury trains (or some of them) be diverted to Bath and Bristol is a none-starter. There is more traffic from Chippenham (and Swindon) to Trowbridge (and Westbury) than there is to / from Melksham - 25% of the traffic was Melksham when the service was improved for 2014, and it's now roughly 40% and growing, but Trowbridge and Westbury traffic (including Trowbridge and Westbury to/from Melksham traffic) is vital to the success of the service and to the line as a whole, and it would be madness to redirect all the services onto a Swindon - Chippenham - Melksham - Bradford on Avon and stations to Bath Spa and Bristol Temple Meads route. Redirecting half the trains would (in my opinion) give you the worst of both worlds - a very infrequent through service to anywhere to the south west of Melksham with unnecessary complexity in giving users timetable / journey information.
TransWilts services need to be stepped up to hourly. And linked southwards to Salisbury and the Solent area. Different thread / post. And that requires significant infrastructure improvements to the currently-single line section between Chippenham and Trowbridge. Whether that is in the form of a passing loop, multiple loops, redoubling the line - I pass to industry experts who have been commissioned to take a look and work it out. That's not just for the hourly passenger train - that's also for a massive increase in freight that we foresee from multiple sources. Yet even when the service is stepped up to hourly, I'm going to suggest that it should remain consistent and become clock face - no dilution of alternate services headed around a new corner to Bath, and no diverting the whole services and turning a North - South TransWilts service into just another route from Swindon to Bristol.
Melksham passenger journey numbers are around 75,000 per annum at present. That's up from around 3,000 which were the figures I was given by the
ORR» (now "Office for Rail and Road" though the initials were for the "Office of the Rail Regulator" at that time. Comparing Melksham to other rail served towns in the area, I would not be surprised to see those figures increase 5 to 10 fold over the next decade - but that's based on services being stepped up to a suitable level, with sufficient passenger capacity, reliability, pricing, Melksham Station being able to cope, etc. By that stage, we would be looking at 2 passenger trains per hour each way, and at that point alternate trains to Bath and Bristol via a re-instated Bradford curve could make sense. Evaluation needed - but it would be sensible to look at it.
I would suggest that in any redoubling / resignalling / adding of loops, a minimum of passive provision is made for re-instatement of the Bradford North Curve. And the curve could - if provided early - be useful for engineering diversions. As an early "for example", the 12 day closure of Westbury over Christmas and New Year 2018/19 threatens no trains at all calling at Melksham from Saturday 22nd December 2018 to Friday 4th January 2019. It also reduces local trains from Bradford-on-Avon into Bristol to hourly, local services (according to early data) at Avoncliff, Freshford, Oldfield Park and Keynsham only served every 2 or 3 hours by Weymouth trains. In fact, I have asked about a Swindon to Bristol service on the Melksham section rather than buses and await an answer; seems to me it would solve a whole series of problems, using the reversal north of Trowbridge.
So - to summarise. Lacock curve - long shot, but you never know. Bradford curve - not yet, its too early (at least for a regular through-the-day passenger service) but do make passive provision / add it in when works are being done. Beyond foreseeable - put in both curves and run Bristol Metro on a loop Bristol - Bath - Corsham - Melksham - Bradford-on-Avon - Bath - Bristol, half hourly service alternating directions in addition to the Swindon to Westbury, extended into an Oxford to Southampton and perhaps into a Bedford to Fawley.
It should be noted that there is an excellent bus service from Melksham to Bath - and I would recommend this in preference to the train for most journeys at present. For Melksham to Bristol, you have to change anyway - and train is going to be optimum. Care needs to be taken if a train service were to run direct from Melksham to Bath to ensure that all customers including intermediate bus passengers remain catered for.
