Melksham Missing From Santa FGW Christmas Eve Service Delivery List...

[whole diary]

[grahame]

Will,  I'm not a trained wordsmith, so sometimes I say things a bit wrong.   

It's natural for me - when I see a handful of incidents / stations / places / packets of ham on the Tesco shelves to make a comparison.  Things like "what's the best value", "which is the bigger" etc. It helps me make choices, understand best value for money, and pick up on the relationship and relative treatment of people and communities.  And in my post I made the assumption, which may be false, that others do the same when they see a list. Thinking about it, though, I don't think my assumption was a poor one.  After all - we see the pop charts, the 20 worst films of the year, the most popular boy's names ... listed all over the place, so there's clearly a market for comparisons.

Sorry for any offence caused by my assumption of comparison in this thread thus far.  But actually it is quite a fair one' certainly the GWRUS^▸ (Great Western Route Utilisation Strategy) suggested (if I may take the liberty of comparing) an hourly service each way from Swindon to Westbury, etc, giving a passenger train every 30 minutes over the Chippenham - Trowbridge length of track, with an intermediate stop at Melksham, and it had a far lower stopping level suggested for the smaller stations on the Cotswold line.

P.S.  I'm aware that I have been naughtily selective in the comparison, and that Reading is larger than any of the other places mentioned.  I understand that it usually has quite frequent trains 

[grahame]

Back "on topic" ... a request to Santa for a carriage or two may be found here:

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debate/?id=2010-12-21a.1406.2

[IndustryInsider]

Back "on topic" ... a request to Santa for a carriage or two may be found here:

And a very well worded request it is too.  Presumably this was just a debate statement rather than one to which somebody in the DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) had to provide an answer to?

[Brucey]

Members will receive a shiny, high-speed train set for their constituents, but for me and the long-suffering commuters of Wiltshire one or two second-hand carriages would grant us our Christmas wish.

And so true this too.  I'm sure other parts of the West would also benefit from one or two second-hand carriages, which I don't think is too much to ask for when millions is being spent on new high speed lines.

I've long had a theory that if trains don't call at London, they aren't considered important.  If the Portsmouth - Cardiff was a (hypothetical) London - Cardiff via Portsmouth service, then I believe it would instantly receive additional carriages.

[IndustryInsider]

In the meantime, perhaps Melksham's best chance remains the Go! Cooperative's (the rail arm of which is now known as GOCO^▸ (Previous name for Go-Op Train - ) Train) open-access service from Yeovil/Frome to the Midlands.

As recently as a month ago there is a statement on their website http://www.go-now.coop/info/ saying that they expect (note the wording, not hope, not plan, but expect) to commence their service as at December 2011.  I have to say I'll eat my hat if it's up and running that quickly, but time will tell!

[willc]

What's being a trained wordsmith go to do with it? The initial post was simply about which stations were going longest without a train over Christmas. No suggestion of population sizes, relative values, comparisons or anything else.

Frankly, if you are trying to make a case for more trains for Melksham to be written into the next Greater Western franchise - because that is clearly going to be the key moment in your fight, never mind what Go! are up to - making silly and spurious comparisons with halts in the west Oxfordshire countryside, which would probably have closed 15 years ago if BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)) had done its paperwork properly, will do Melksham no favours.

(Population) size isn't everything, especially when it comes to service levels and passenger numbers at particular railway stations. Apart from Evesham, which is about the same size as Melksham, every station on the Cotswold Line serves places with small populations, so should we be stripped of lots of the trains that generate large numbers of passengers and large sums of money for the railway?

[Chris from Nailsea]

Erm ... to be fair, willc, grahame has already apologised for any offence caused by his drawing his own comparisons from some of the subsequent posts on this topic.

[grahame]

Thanks, Chris.

If anyone's unclear, I agree (and I have for years) that the best way forward is to put a good case, and to celebrate other railway success stories, as they provide evidence of good practise and what's been proven to work. I'm baffled as to where I'm supposed to have said that services should be stripped / reduced elsewhere - there may be the very, very occasional one but I wouldn't know enough to confirm that;  I'm rather more of the view that the cuts of the 1960s / 1970s went over the top, and that around 30% of those lines / stations would running successfully if they were still with us.

[IndustryInsider]

Erm ... to be fair, willc, grahame has already apologised for any offence caused by his drawing his own comparisons from some of the subsequent posts on this topic.

In other words: Crikey, Will - cut the guy a bit of slack!

Sounds like the cancellation rate on the Melksham route has been horrendous.  It's one thing to advertise that trains are being removed from the timetable, but quite another to advertise them as running and cancel so many of them.

[grahame]

My first two pictures of the New Year ...



Help point, timed at 08:47 (we were planning a trip out to the Sales today).   I pressed the information button and asked what the alternative was, and was advised that the next train we would be able to catch will leave at 15:20. No other alternative was suggested / offered;  we're making plans that don't involve the train.

On our way back hope, I noticed this chap who I suspect was headed for the station; I'm guessing (judging by the size of his suitcase) that he's starting a long trip home after spending the New Year away ...

[Lee]

Oh well, at least there appears to be a bus "alternative" to yet another TransWilts cancellation...

21:08 Swindon to Westbury due 21:51

This train has been cancelled.This is due to an earlier train fault. Replacement road transport will be in operation.

[willc]

At no point have I disputed that:

a. Melksham has a lousy service to start with.
b. Is seen as an easy option for cancellations the minute there's a problem with rolling stock, staff or infrastructure.

But to trying to draw any parallels with the situation of a couple of badly-sited rural halts in west Oxfordshire, with a bare minimum 'Parliamentary' service and that the railway would happily be shot of if anyone was prepared to take the heat over a closure procedure, will never help make Melksham's case. I would be very worried if the RUS^▸ (Route Utilisation Strategy) had not said that Melksham should get more services than such places.

As for

I'm baffled as to where I'm supposed to have said that services should be stripped / reduced elsewhere

you wrote the following

How sad that we end up comparing places like Finstock (population 707) with places like Melksham (pop 24000).  Logic tells me that on a level playing field, a place with 30 times the population might expect to have at least 15 times the train service - that's allowing a 2:1 fudge factor for Finstock residents being (person for person) very heavy rail users.

Unless logic only works one way here, then logic would suggest that places that are one eighth the size of Melksham (Charlbury and Moreton-in-Marsh, to name but two) should, on your level playing field, whatever fudge factor you apply, expect to have far fewer trains than they do now, never mind their best-ever service from September.

But the playing field is not level and never will be. Logic (and population size) should dictate that from September it would be Shipton, not Ascott-under-Wychwood that gets calls by the lion's share of extra Cotswold Line services, but it won't, due to Shipton being stuck with one two-car platform and one three-car, when the extra workings will use three-car sets, but lucky Ascott will have one new three-car platform and an extension to the existing platform, courtesy of the redoubling project budget.

And there are a whole list of local factors that determine the use of every single station in FGW^▸ (First Great Western)-land, irrespective of logic, population and playing fields, level or otherwise, such as useless timetables dictated by minimum service requirements drawn up by civil servants who probably had no idea where Melksham is, never mind its population.

[IndustryInsider]

But the playing field is not level and never will be. Logic (and population size) should dictate that from September it would be Shipton, not Ascott-under-Wychwood that gets calls by the lion's share of extra Cotswold Line services, but it won't, due to Shipton being stuck with one two-car platform and one three-car, when the extra workings will use three-car sets, but lucky Ascott will have one new three-car platform and an extension to the existing platform, courtesy of the redoubling project budget.

Shouldn't logic dictate that from September the money used to lengthen Ascott's current platform should instead have been used to lengthen Shipton's short platform?  Ascott's 2-car platform is longer than Shipton's, but only by 4 metres.

[tramway]

I'm all for talking level playing fields so I'm with Will on this, there are a few stations closer to home I think that need to be compared with as well as places further afield, such as the service levels that BoA^» (Bradford-on-Avon - next trains) and Freshford get with their footfalls compared with similar stations, a quick check on the handy comparator at the top of the page always makes interesting reading.

Freshford (Pop 530) gets virtually an identical peak service as Trowbridge, where did that come from. I would hope that Finstock residents would be fighting to get a 20 min service in the mornings put into the RUS^▸ (Route Utilisation Strategy) as well.

[willc]

But the playing field is not level and never will be. Logic (and population size) should dictate that from September it would be Shipton, not Ascott-under-Wychwood that gets calls by the lion's share of extra Cotswold Line services, but it won't, due to Shipton being stuck with one two-car platform and one three-car, when the extra workings will use three-car sets, but lucky Ascott will have one new three-car platform and an extension to the existing platform, courtesy of the redoubling project budget.

Shouldn't logic dictate that from September the money used to lengthen Ascott's current platform should instead have been used to lengthen Shipton's short platform?  Ascott's 2-car platform is longer than Shipton's, but only by 4 metres.

Perhaps, but then there are four fewer metres of new platform required, so probably quite a saving given the figures sometimes quoted for what seems like a pretty simple job - plus if you are going to encourage more people to use Shipton, you face the problem of people crossing the line to get to cars parked on the other side earlier in the day at a station lacking a footbridge, with the only legal option being a trek up to the road bridge and then all the way down the other approach road. No prizes for guessing what people sometimes do instead... Ascott's level crossing offers a no-cost solution there.

To be fair to Network Rail's redoubling project team, they are trying their hardest to identify savings within the overall budget or other possible sources of funding with a view to using any such money to deliver useful add-ons, with a Shipton platform extension and extra parking on the works compound at Charlbury top of the list.