Filling the 15:19 to 17:36 gap from Swindon

There are gaps in the Swindon to Melksham / Trowbridge / Westbury service ... we moved from a unusable service prior to December 2013 up to what remains, frankly, still a poor service today - poor in terms of frequency, with some long gaps in the service which really hold the line's growth back. I'm personally known to some of the regular passengers - who appreciate the hard work put in by everyone to this point (rightly including GWR^▸ and the council in "everyone" in many cases) ... but when new passengers come along, they remain shocked at the infrequency and - as I did above - describe the service as poor / express displeasure.

The key southbound gaps (mid-line / Melksham times) are
between 06:38 and 09:18 - making a commute into the county town of Trowbridge for a 9 to 5 job impractical
between 15:45 and 18:02 - a severe gap in the return-from-work from Chippenham or Swindon
after 20:33 - making late working or an evening out impossible
northbound gaps (mid-line / Melksham times) are
07:49 to 10:02 - people get to work in Chippenham especially very early indeed
16:37 to 18:48 - no practical return-from-work from the county town of Trowbridge
after 19:47 - which is absurdly early for the last train of the day. No chance of evening out!

The proposal for liking Swindon - Westbury, Westbury - Salisbury and Salisbury - Southampton takes the number of trains per day up initially from 9 to 13, and it's no co-incidence that the gaps above are plugged in that proposal.

A couple of days back, I was asked to fill in a passenger who wishes to return from Swindon to Melksham at about 16:30 ... going back and telling the story and how we stand, here's what I wrote (may be useful shared):

Quote

[Name] passed your request for an update on to me as I’ve been working with both South Western Railway (SWR^» ) and Great Western Railway (GWR) this year.

There is little prospect of anything changing until next summer.

SWR - who operate services from the Salisbury depot including a few to Westbury and Bristol - were charged as part of their franchise to report on through service possibilities from Swindon to Southampton, and I understand that as part of that report - linking up Swindon - Westbury, Westbury - Salisbury and Salisbury - Southampton services does fill in some gaps - three or four extra trains each way per day, including trains from Swindon at about held past seven in the morning, and half past four and half past ten at night. From Melksham to Swindon, one of the extra trans would indeed fill the 07:50 to 10:02 gap. At the time the work was specified, it was anticipated that the GWR area would be refranchised in 2019 or 2020 and changes if agreed could be implemented then.

Sadly, the work of modernising the GWR mainline has fallen very much behind schedule, and the anticipated GWR refranchise has slipped into the future - 2022 or 2024, assuming that government does;t change the system. Timetable changes for January 2019 have been postponed to later in the year, with those timetables when they come in being based on current service level. With new faster trains on the London expresses at both Swindon and Westbury, Some changes on the TransWilts are inevitable and we have been fighting hard to even maintain some of the useful features of the current service which were thrown out in the initial drafts - a very few train planners have a lot of work to do, and only limited time to ask what will and won’t work locally.

As I write, many changes that we requested for the timetable that start sometime in 2019 are with Great Western, and I would be hopeful that we would get at least some of the problems dealt with. For the following two year period (2020 to 2022) the Department for Transport will be asking GWR for a price over coming months. We wait to see what service level is to be priced, and I stand prepared to press GWR to use any flexibility they have to bid for service improvements. Indications, though, are that the request will be for two more years of ‘the same’.

One of the issues we have with a 16:30 Swindon to Melksham (or an 08:50 Melksham to Swindon) is the lack of a train to run the service until we join up south of Westbury, or find it from elsewhere. This is very expensive unless the train and crew are used for other things for the rest of the day, and if the extra train brings new business. Unfortunately, rail industry models indicate that the extra train at 16:30 would most likely steal passengers from the 15:18 and 17:36 and only generate limited new business, meaning that GWR (a commercial company) would be spending a lot more money - basically to dilute the profitability of the service to them and their shareholders. The Swindon to Southampton proposals rather help this issue, but they’re not moving anything like fast. We do keep our eyes open for opportunities, mind you.

Clearly, there is at present another issue - service reliability - which also needs to be addressed. Separate thread; there is some hope in that GWR realise there's a mess that's loosing traffic and image - but our problems on the TransWilts are just a microcosm of the problems they're having almost all the way across their network ...