Summer Saturday Promotion - Swindon, Chippenham and Melksham to Weymouth

[whole diary]

[grahame]

The railway from Swindon and Chippenham via Melksham to Trowbridge and Westbury, with connections at both ends enabling you to reach thousand of other station, has become a key passenger artery in and out of Melksham in recent years, as well as a main through flow through the town and across Wiltshire. Trains run about every 2 hours, 7 days a week, all through the day and evening.  Timetable at http://www.mtug.org.uk/summer23sheet1.pdf

This summer, our train operator ( Great Western Railway at https://www.gwr.com ) is running a through train every Saturday to Weymouth, leaving Swindon at 08:45, Chippenham and 09:00 and Melksham at 09:10, returning from Weymouth at 19:40.  No need to book ahead - just buy your ticket at the station on the day.  Try the train, and have a great day in Weymouth.  It's just £21.50 return for adults (or £14.15 each for three or more), £10.75 for children, free for those under 5.
 
I'm honoured to have been helping to promote the line and the service for a number of years, and have watched services increase 5-fold and passenger numbers 25-fold in the last decade, and this summer I have been visiting Weymouth and onward connections from there every Saturday. Please join me one Saturday - lots of ideas and pictures in a little video (10 minutes) I have put together at http://grahamellis.uk/lib/weyslides.mp4 . See you on Saturday?

[[ Above is a Facebook post - ((here)) ]]

[grahame]

I have posted (other threads) about the Saturdays that the train has run already and my journeys to Weymouth and beyond.   Today, with other appointments in the afternoon, I just went down to unstaffed little platform in Melksham to check that everyone got away happy.   Around 45 people joined the train and 5 got off, and I estimate through the window that there were around 150 on there on departure on the 3 coach train.  So that's [155/50] on the old passenger count system (155 total journeys on the train on the section from Chippenham to Trowbridge that has no other regular services, of whom 50 were travelling to or from Melksham)

Having a person at a station with some background knowledge can be helpful both to passengers and to the railway business.  Random issues this morning included helping with the ticket machine, where a traveller was collecting a ticket purchased for him on a relative's card that the machine was asking for,  and letting people going away for a week know that there's also a direct train from Weymouth to Melksham on Sundays - just that it doesn't make for a day trip.   That latter has generated extra income for the railway, as the passenger concerned was otherwise going to be drive back - one of the 40% who won't make a train journey if a change is involved.

[grahame]

A season mauled by industrial action and other issues - but still lots of good trips.  Next two Saturdays I don't expect it will run and we're certainly not  marketing it.

GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) promised a 3 car train (280 seats) through the season and that was right - limited marketing north from north of Trowbridge woking to have perhaps 150 to 180 from there, extras joining so the train arrived into Yeovil Pen Mill with most  seats taken and was full and standing down to Weymouth - around 350 to 400 passengers by that point.   

Train running not on strike days promised and that was kept until 12th. To be fair, they promised that the through train to Weymouth would run and not the return train (19:40 ex Weymouth) in passenger service - so it ran empty on 12th as far as Westbury where in entered passenger service.  Weymouth to Melksham return passenger arriving at the station for the 19:40 (21:34, Melksham) were directed to the 20:20 to Westbury, where they found that no transport had been arranged ahead and they had to wait a further 40 minutes.

Length promise kept until yesterday (19.08), when a 2 car turned up. ....

186 seats (WikiPedia)
1st carriage -12 seats open +8 standing. +8 childen on laps
2nd carriage -3 seats open +15 standing. +7 children on laps
209 persons ex Melksham (about 35 had joined there and 4 got off - [213/39] )

After Trowbridge, 8 standing in my carriage had become 25.
Say another 40 on the train - so 250 people on a 186 seater.

Prior experience through the season is that numbers roughly double by Weymouth with further pickups along the way - that would have made 500 in 2 carriages. However, perhaps 25 to 30 more than usual left the train at Westbury to change for Warminster. I would make an educated guess at well over 400 people into Weymouth and perhaps passengers left behind at Pen Mill. Real Time Trains reports 8 minutes at Pen Mill, but as that's to await the single line it does not tell us how long station duties took.