A bit of honesty here. The train is well used, it needs to be frequent to be used more but it's never been over crowded and often runs, like now with plenty of free seats. But throwing false bits of info into the mix is never a good option to take to increase service levels. (and this is coming from some who has used the service not an arm chair critic).

As chair or MTUG, totally agree your sentiment. Capacity - as noted - was an issue in 2017 / into the first half of 2018, on the 17:35 (as it was) from Swindon. It was cured once GWR retired their class 153 trains which were used for many services until then. Not been an issue since except on very rare occasions when disruption elsewhere decants loads of long distance passengers onto our train. From time to time I walk through the train taking a rough count and it's averaging just over 100 passengers using that service on the single line sections that's not duplicated by other passenger trains. In the early days there was also a capacity on the summer / weekend train that extends to Weymouth for day trips; that's a hard one to predict but we have muted publicity. Plenty of seats Swindon to Westbury, gets full and standing and sometimes very full south of Yeovil.

Covid and changing work patterns hit us bad, probably because so many of our passengers were daily commuters into jobs that can be done remotely or indeed automatically. It has built back up, but the peak is no longer as sharp as it was, as work hours have become much more flexible; on the busiest section of the line, you'll find the 15:29 and 19:00 from Chippenham carrying far more passengers that the 18:00 (was 17:50) which is good for load balancing.

There was absolutely no intent to mislead readers into thinking we have a capacity issue on any individual train these days - sorry if it read like that. Issues holding back growth remain frequency, reliability, and the customer experience in particular at Melksham Station.

Huge THANK YOU for using the service; please continue to do so, and let us know of any other issues. You would also be very very welcome to be more actively involved.

We can characterise it that we have moved from a useless service after 9th September 2006 to a sparse service with significant issues, but useable in many cases, as at 9th September 2026.

Outstanding issues are ...
1. Train reliability. 90% of trains run but on an infrequent service we really need 98% plus
2. Train frequency. We need a minimum of one train each way per hour and (really) two
3. Unfriendliness to new users of station and information and ticketing systems

We have moved forward - those issues are nothing like as dire as they were in 2007, and they are generally acknowledged, appreciated, and projected to be addressed in upcoming strategies. And they need to be.

[edited - url updated]
https://www.wellho.info/mouth/974_The-last-commuter-train-through-Melksham.html
End of edit


* Trial (thin but useable) service returned in 2013

* Reached it's three year target in first year

* Growth stopped by 2018 because single carriage train was full

* We now have longer trains and platform, and the service remains thin from 2013, though the biggest holes such as Sunday morning, Saturday evening, and late Monday to Friday evening have now all been fixed.

* Biggest issue is still reliability. The weekend just gone there should have been 14 round trips, but only 7 ran.  Passenger numbers up from 3,000 journeys per annum to / from Melksham to around 70,000 at present but it should be 400,000.   70,000 is a lot of journeys, but I still talk in the community to more people who don't use Melksham Station than who do, citing lack of reliability and thinness of timetable as their top two reasons to not do so.  Third reason is unfriendliness of station access. No concerns over safety or comfort of train, nor at fare level.

Should now work at https://grahamellis.uk/writings/hm974.html ... adding in other work there over the next couple of days so you may see occasional changes as the archive arrives, and perhaps errors as I test new lumps of code

Looks like I screwed something up in the final edit ... seeing if I can stop it; not obvious. Let me grab a coffee and then look.

This page isn’t working
grahamellis.uk is currently unable to handle this request.
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Same for me. Blimey, if grahamellis is unable to handle this request, "we're all doomed!"

http://www.wellho.net/mouth/974_The-last-commuter-train-through-Melksham.html

The last commuter train through Melksham

"We have altered the trains from Monday". "Please check for changes to your trains". "First - Transforming travel". Theses are the messages writ loud in the publicity surrounding the current train timetable changes. And they read positive, don't they?

I was very disappointed on yesterday evening's train from Swindon to Southampton - the very last commuter service on that route - to find that many travellers were unaware that 60% of the already-few trains running south of Chippenham from Sunday are WITHDRAWN, and that commuters from Westbury, Trowbridge and Melksham into Swindon face an extra 90 minutes on their day.

[snip]

First have made themselves look like arrogant fools in their casting of an excessively positive light on the new timetable changes - sweeping as far as they can any bad news under the carpet, treating (over the past few weeks especially) passengers on the TransWilts service with contempt as they cancelled the busiest train of the day - the 17:43 from Swindon - time and time again (official target - 98.5% to run. Achieved - around 70% to 80% depending on the time period you take).