Great Western Coffee Shop

Each time I catch the train, it seems to be busier than the last time.  Yesterday, Lisa and  caught the 12:03 from Melksham into Swindon - that's the first of two lunchtime trains that are quite closely timed together.  +4 -2 at Melksham -> 27.   29/6.  Returning on the 15:12 from Swindon - 45 on from Chippenham, 15 off and 4 on at Melksham. 49/19.

When it's raining, passengers are now waiting in the cycle shelter because the new (4 times larger!) waiting shelter at Melksham is full, and even with a ticket machine at the station and two passenger-facing crew on the train (as we had the other morning), it's a struggle to complete remaining tickets sales that the TVM can't handle by Chippenham. When the train's 2 coaches, there's a distinct delay with single door operation; even when the train's just one coach, it takes time through two doors.  Last Saturday we (back of queue) were waiting on the platform to get on as those from the front of the queue found the remaining seats.   Yes, we squeezed on and squeezed up to let the conductor get on too!

There are more trains. There is a bigger shelter. There is more parking. There is a TVM to provide more ticketing bandwidth.   But all this lot was specified on growth from around 8,000 journeys per annum (when you take out distortions) before the service improved to around 50,000 which was regarded as silly-optimistic for the end of the LSTF period, and there seems to have been an assumption that after the 3 years of promotion that some sort of steady state would be achieved.

So - it's time to look forward again - estimate where traffic levels can / should go for a market town of some 27,000 population with strong links to neighbouring towns such as Chippenham and Trowbridge, and think about what's needed and how it can be achieved.  And to do so before facilities which are great, but hitting their limits, start to effect the desire of people to travel by train with the resulting reduction in growth and indeed also with the potential issues of health and safety overcrowding on a short platform and in the industrial park in which the station is situated, and through which pedestrians pass.

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Looking ahead, then, what sort of passenger numbers should we expect at a future Melksham station which isn't suppressed by lack of capacity / lack of attraction?   A good indicator is to compare to other towns of similar size and see what their passenger numbers are, and to compare to nearby towns and scale based on their numbers.  Clearly no two towns are identical, so results need to be looked at through out-of-focus spectacles, and if you can still see something clearly enough it's pretty fair bet.   You also need to allow for a considerable period of time to elapse before you see the full results.

OK ... passenger journeys per head of population, year to March 2015.   Melksham - 2.2;  Warminster - 18; Trowbridge - 25; Westbury - 35; Chippenham - 52; Bradford-on-Avon - 53.    So if we take an ultra-conservative figure of 12 for Melksham in the future that we should now be planning for 300,000 passengers per annum, and if we look to equalling the lowest other station I've quoted we should be looking at 450,000 passengers. Still very conservative, as Warminster has a big military population and so their commuting-by-train (civilian) population is going to be low.   And again conservative as it doesn't allow for general growth of rail traffic in coming years, nor for the significant extra population moving in to lots of new houses in the Melksham area over and above general population growth. 

Even 300,000 is a big step from last published year's figures of 60,000.   It's a five times increase.   Train wise, it's a train every hour (rather than every 2 hours), and those trains being 2 carriages long each, and you're again looking at full and standing on some services.

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So - the station and services were specified up to the most optimistic projections (our 2011 consultants report suggesting 220,000 journeys on the line by year 5) but in year 2 of the new service we're already exceeding that (235,000 journeys by year 2). And we now need to look ahead to the next decade, using numbers based on our new experience and comparisons which would have been laughed off the table had we raised them five years ago.  Last night, Paul Johnson of the TransWilts CIC presented these options for the future to members of Melksham's area board, Melksham Town Council, and Melksham Without Parish Council. Paul's done a massive amount of background work putting this together, working with our train operator (Great Western Railway) and Local Transport Authority (Wiltshire Council) . Rather than me rewrite the presenation and proposal, please take a look at it at http://atrebatia.info/melkshamstationforward.pdf

Paul's executive summary states:

Does anyone else get the impression that grahame is rather pleased with the way passenger numbers at Melksham Station is going?  ;) :D ;D

I would like to state again here that I believe much of that success is due to grahame's tireless efforts to initially 'save the train', then to improve the train services, and now to build on that incredible turnaround.

Thank you, grahame.  :-X

From Facebook - better answered here for permanence of answer and due to its length


Frequency and duration of service

There's a strong case for an hourly train service - indeed there are indications that such a service would attract more people per train than the current service does.   You saw elements of this last August when there was an hourly service due to engineering diversions; it worked well, kept time, loaded well, and there was still capacity for freight.  Of course the traffic on it was diverted as well as our normal traffic, but you should have seen my inbox (and the negative comment therein) when the service dropped back to every 2 hours or so, and finished in the early evening.  Even in that short time people had switched ... and were amazed when a busy service got 'pulled'.

More that hourly?   I don't think so - but the case hasn't really been looked at; indications are that passenger per train will peak (current populations, enough capacity on trains - i.e. long enough) at hourly; odd interval services like the 3 trains every 2 hour on the Severn Beach line are not idea as people want the clarify of 'clockface' times.

More Stations

In Wiltshire, there are potential cases with active support for new stations at Wilton Parkway for Stonehenge, Corsham, Royal Wooton Bassett, Devizes Parkway (Lydeway) and Porton. There may be a handful more, but we're a very way away from re-opening everything there used to be along the corridor.  Lacock, Beanacre, Broughton Gifford, Holt and Staverton aren't on the horizon (but of course I can't tell you what there may be in a world over the horizon). 

Where you can (and we should) add further start and end points ("station equivalents") to the network is by sorting out the buses.   Take a look at http://option247.uk and the new Bus Services Bill, of which our MP is a strong supporter.  The vision here is that you change from a train to a bus at just about any station (only Dilton Marsh and Avoncliff in Wiltshire might be exceptions).  Through ticketing and information systems that are joined up, services that connect and are integrated, buses running for the same sort of hours that the trains run, and sharing the vehicles and cost with the current network (or rag-bag of commercial and subsidised routes if you feel that the current setup fails as a connecting network).  It's scandalous that our tourist attractions such as Lacock are inaccessible by public transport on a Sunday, and that visitor and residents without cars don't have services after 6 p.m. on any day of the week.

Redouble the line

There's an argument for more capacity. Whether you go with Network Rail plans as stated three or four years back of an extra signal to allow two trains to follow each other up the single track, or something mores substantial, is an interesting question.  Remember that the hourly service + freight actually worked last summer, although trains were very thin on the ground compared to usual on the Swindon - Chippenham and Westbury - Trowbridge sections.

One of the concerns on the TransWilts line is the lack of a freight train refuge all the way from Westbury to Swindon; once a freight has left Westury it can't stop ... and if it's slow it will hold up other services.  When TransWilts passenger trains were just 2 a day, the single track section became in effect the refuge, but now the signallers need to take great care before risking that - a freight waiting on the single track can block a passenger train headed the other way which in turn can block an express.  Doubling the line only party fixes that; there's still no refuge!!!  And that's why ideas like a loop to the third platform at Chippenham, or just to the north of the current Melksham Station, or at Bradford and / or Thingley junctions or long 'leads' and double junctions there are worth looking at rather than - at this stage - redoubling.  Even if there's a business case for redoubling, I would suspect that there's a better business case for something much less expensive.   There IS a case for retaining infrastructure / not doing anything that would make redoubling, or adding an extra platform / loop at Chippenham and / or Westbury more difficult.  And indeed those latter aspirations got noted in the South West invitation to tender paperwork from the DfT recently, so they're getting to be on the radar.

Speculating, I suspect that a loop just to the north of the current Melksham Station, stretching to Dunch Lane Bridge so it could take the longest of freight trains, is worthy of consideration and would come out pretty well in an evaluation.  As soon as you put a loop away from a station, you slow down passenger trains if they have to pass each other there (and passing passenger trains at Melksham on an hourly service makes operational sense for the timing of a Swindon service).  But putting a loop at a station requires a second platform and a foot bridge which these days must be wheel chair accessible - so long gentle ramps, or lifts; very expensive indeed.   We're attracted by the ida of building a second platform on the same side as the current platform but up alongside the loop.  It's then a flat walk between the platforms, and two passenger trains can arrive concurretly and each make a single stop for passenger and to pass. The old platform becomes northbound, and the new one southbound.   By passing passenger trains at Melksham, you also reduce the occupancy of the single track by passenger services to 18 minutes in the hour,leaving plenty of freight capacity - easily one northbound and one southbound path, with still the line only occupied 70% of the time.

On the team

There's a few misconceptions here, and I'm  bit embarrassed!  I know that my press, publicity and co-ordination role for the current service promotion gives me a very high visibility, but it's other members of our team who do / have done so much of the background work, and the strategic work too that actually gives me a service to publicise.   I'm, exceptionally, going to name Paul Johnson - who's chair of the TransWilts - as the key strategic person and the work you saw on Melksham Station's very much of his doing.  Just as the improved trial service that's becoming permanent wouldn't be there at all without him.  I say "exceptionally" in naming him because there are so many others involved too and it's deparatetly hard to know who and how many to name; there are half a dozen or so others who, also are key to the line being where it is today, and a slide from my "Wilts Somerset and Weymouth" presentation has a fine-print page that lists out names to show you the utter width of help and support.  Last year, two other volunteers were nominated for national awards; Lee was shortlisted for the prestigious and hard-fought ACoRP award, and Bob got an award from Railfuture.  This 'season' other names are going in - that's how wide our team is.  We have a passenger survey running this weekend from Saturday through Monday - separate post - and I have emailed around a dozen 'leads' this morning - again, look at the team width!

But the TransWilts success is not based purely on the community team - they're just one (vital) cog in the wheel.

TransWilts is a community rail PARTNERSHIP.  And that's three elements.  It's the rail industry, especially the train operator (Great Western Railway) who have thrown their heart into this - at director and management level, and operationally too. In my current role I meet up with other Community Rail officers, and I realise just how well we're working and how good GWR are for us.  That's not to say that we don't also (as the community element) also get on well with South West Trains, the Go-op Cooperative, and Network Rail just as we do with First group.  The third element - on top of community and rail industry - is the local transport authority.   In this case, that's Wiltshire Council who had the guts to make the LSTF bid that enable the trial service, and who manage it and the developments we've had to improve at stations - primarily Trowbridge from LSTF funding, but significant works at Melksham too.  Although current economise preclude the council from offering anything like the time or funding help they were able to provide under LSTF, they are and will remain key parters, with some officers and some elected members going way beyond the call of duty to help ensure that TransWilts works.

Last - and not least (indeed I've kept the most important to last!) are the passengers - the people who actually use the service. Very much a part of the success story, and in many cases with their lives more and more linked to the availability of the service. They contribute by riding and paying to ride, and by being our ambassadors to other potential passengers.   Because the TransWilts line's current service serves five significant towns which are economically linked, has ongoing connections at both ends, and really isn't seasonal we have a superb resource of passengers and potential passengers, so with all the ducks in a row, this line really should work - and it does.  The same will be able to be said if the service were to extend to Westbury Leigh (where there's Dilton Marsh station), Warminster, Wilton and Salisbury.

Grahame
Have you thought about a 'Penryn' type platform where a single platform is split 50/50 by the loop points.  That way you can pass two trains in the platform and not have the expense of an additional platform and footbridge (Help: CfN to the rescue.  Don't know how to shorten this link).

Image of Penryn Station (https://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fthestationmaster.files.wordpress.com%2F2012%2F04%2Fpenryn-station.jpeg&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fstationmaster.me.uk%2F2012%2F05%2F01%2Fp-p-pick-up-a-penryn%2F&docid=yJE6rLLzqDHp_M&tbnid=sqYI2Cb2vp8jFM%3A&w=1024&h=768&client=tablet-android-samsung&bih=800&biw=1280&ved=0ahUKEwi4vYjv7PDNAhVJNhoKHRDKC14QMwgdKAEwAQ&iact=mrc&uact=8)



Edit note: Link to image shortened, as requested. CfN. ;) 

Yes - we have - and indeed we've taken that approach and thought it slightly further ahead - it may be two separate platforms on the same side - one to the south of the loop and the other alongside the loop.   Construction of a footpath and cycle way rather than an edged platform may be lower in cost, and we don't really want a tradeoff between tightness of turn into loop and length of platform to be constructed.  That is, however, far from clear from the initial images. 

Of course, even without the southbound platform (i.e. just the platform on the single track) you could still pass two passenger trains, but you would loose the advantage of both performing their station duties at the same time, and I image that commuters to Melksham at the end of a tiring day in Swindon would be well peeved at sitting in the loop 200 yards from the station awaiting a late running northbound service. A somewhat naughty solution to this need to wait would be to install linked driver advisory systems in the trains so that their arrival was synchronised.

As a matter of interest, there's an even clearer impression of how the Penryn Loop works so well, here (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8f/Penryn_trains_passing_2_(cropped).jpg).  :)

Thanks CfN. Could you PM with the details of how to shorten the links as I couldn't find how to on the Help pages.

Better than that - I'll provide some guidance to everyone, in a new topic on the Help board of the Coffee Shop forum.  ;)

The significant problem with that arrangement is that due the required safety overlap on the signal protecting the double to single line points that the second platform on the double line section would have to be at least 200m further away from the points, quite a walk that is.

Presumably extending the present platform so that a whole 2-coach train can get on and off rather than having to squeeze through one door has been looked at?

To which the solution is to bring in the northbound train to the northern of the platforms first, then the southbound train passes it prior to stopping at the southernmost platform?  Really Penryn modified.


Very much so!

The main-line (Aberystwyth) side of Dovey Junction is similar to Penryn, but unlike Penryn there is no fenced-off gap between the two halves (2a for the train in one direction and 2b for the other train) of the platform. A quick Google Images search found this picture (http://midwaleswalking.co.uk/wp-content/gallery/dovey-junction-to-borth/dovey-junction.jpg). Still quite a distance from one end of platform 2a to the far end of platform 2b though.

That's another very interesting example, thanks.

The new pedestrian access (Foundry Close) planned for Melksham comes in 'slap in the middle' between where the two platforms would be - so I'm not overly concerned at the gap, and I think a northbound arrival 1 to 2 minutes before a southbound cuts delays;  a couple of minus in the schedule not a problem, but waiting outside would be.

Any idea of the turnout speed at Dovey Junction?   What about the turnout between the two platforms at Gloucester?

Turnout speed at Dovey Junction = 50kph (30mph) in the Up direction (Eastbound) and 65kph (40mph) in the Down Direction (Westbound) - The Cambrian line is signed in kph

Turnout speed at Gloucester = 25mph in both directions

Why is the Cambrian Line signed in kilometres per hour? Is it a Welsh thing? Does it use those signs with white numbers on a black background like in the Channel Tunnel? And is it due to become more widespread? Curious!

Because it was resignalled with ERTMS, as a pilot project. There is a plan for future ERTMS cab displays to use miles/hr as well, but I think the Cambrian line just used what was available already. See Wikipedia (as always) for more details (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_of_British_transport).

Thanks.

I think that is correct.  Eventually, I assume, ERTMS does away with line-side speed signs completely (ERTMS level 2).  When that has happened, metrification would become easier.