Great Western Coffee Shop

A week into the new timetable – an opportunity to look and see how it has worked for the first 'cycle' - looking at it from a MELKSHAM perspective.

Of 115 trains scheduled to call at Melksham (reduced from 119 in the previous service), 71 called on time and a further 24 were delayed, but by less than 5 minutes.  Sadly, 9 were delayed significantly (rail industry definition) and 11 were cancelled – that's a cancellation rate of 9.6% which is well in excess of the most generous target (to the train operator) of 2%.  Furthermore, all the cancellations were due to reasons attributed to the train operator - 10 due to lack of train crew, and 1 due to a train defect.

With "the biggest timetable change since 1976" and "3 out of 4 trains changed", teething troubles were expected and this first week, to a degree, was a learning period in the first practical operation.  Of course, as far as Melksham is concerned, there was a far bigger change 6 years ago - December 2013 - when our service increased from 2 to 8 round trips a day. For a service which interfaces to other changed trains at both ends, delays can often be traced back to disruption on other lines and it's noticeable that the removal of 'slack' in the old timetable - extra and faster mainline trains - has worked reasonably well until something goes wrong, but then recovery has been more difficult.

Two major concerns for Melksham

1. The continued lack of available train crew – not withstanding our slight service reduction. We are told this is because Sunday is not in the working week, yet none of the reported cancellations was on a Sunday.  On Thursday, it appeared that virtually everything else was running in the area, and yet the last train from Swindon called at 15:39 rather that 21:10.  Sad that a business such as GWR uniquely withdraws service from what has been its fastest growing station.

2. When services are cancelled, the alternatives provided are often so poor that they drive business away.  A report on the Coffee Shop forum of a 20 minute journey through Melksham on Thursday evening tells of a 2 hour late arrival.  Official advice from GWR_Help (to me personally as I was headed for a meeting with my MP in Chippenham) on Saturday when the 10:20 was cancelled was to catch an alternative train - when pressed, GWR_Help said "sorry but the next train is 15:33".   Sporadic bus replacement helps - but is should be consistent. Failure to schedule a replacement bus on Thursday for the peak, or Saturday morning, is astonishing.

I appreciate teething troubles and occasional cancellations

For 2020
* Please – can we look for consistent 98% of trains to run as a minimum standard
* Please – can we look for an alternative that's practical for passengers when something is cancelled?

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P.S. Alongside the withdrawal of a train in the middle of the day (10 calls removed), new trains run on Monday to Friday at 05:33 to Swindon and there's a new later train on Sunday evenings (6 calls added).  I travelled on the first of each of these new services. 

The 21:35 arrival on Sunday 15th December had 15 passengers on board into Melksham.  4 passenger got off, and 2 got on. A good start for a new service. 

On the Monday morning, the new 05:33 for Swindon arrived with a single passenger on board and I was the only one joining; talking with people, there are some whole will use it from time to time to get to London early, and a couple of people who work shift who are happy that they've got it available – but is is going to be a hard train to fill; ironic that fares on it are peak ones!   

The moving of the last train from Swindon on a Monday to Friday back from 20:08 to 20:45 has met with an almost-universal welcome - good news and quite extraordinary as for the most part people are settled into their habits and dislike change - well done GWR on making this alteration - we're headed in the right direction of a true late service like we now have a true early one.

* The new Melksham Train Timetable can be downloaded via http://www.mrug.org.uk

* The recent running history raw data is available at http://www.mrug.org.uk/record.html - current sample:

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/mrug_recent_20191222.jpg)

And then when passenger numbers don't increase due to unreliability they'll say there's no demand for a more frequent service, as the increase has levelled off in the last couple of years.

Wot??!? Surely for rail – as for, say, power, health, police, and even supermarkets – the working week is when the services run.

That's most of our understanding, certainly. But not on the railway.

 If you care to peruse the "Shortage of crew" thread in "Across the West", you'll see the consequences writ large!