In the days of occasional through trains to Brighton ... I know of a person waiting for hours at Leamington Spa for that train on the advise of station staff, while the train she wanted for Hatton kept arriving and leaving at the other side of the station.  "I had a much stronger accent in those days" says my wife, who had just flown into Gatwick that morning ...

Surely not? 

Yep, Correct

Just one guess in 24 hours (each  ) , please ...

1. Taunton - Bobm


2. Melksham - Phil


3. Glasgow Central - Worcester Passenger


4. Dilton Marsh - Southern Stag


5. Westbury - Brooklea


6. Victoria Station, London. Bignosemac


7. Oxford - Brucey

13:47 at Melksham
Arrived with 11 on from Trowbridge
2 joined 1 left
13/3

17:54 at Melksham
Arrived with about 30 on
3 left 2 joined
32/5

19:40 from Westbury
14 ex Trowbridge
6 off and 1 on at Melksham
15/7

Total of 171/37 over the 7 out of 13 trains that I have figures for.  Which would scale up to 318/69 for all 13. That feels reasonable to me as I got a good cross-section.

Sorry, Chris from Nailsea - have I made splitting even harder 

Let me translate from the Banbury Patoise into a more westerly Cotswold dialect ...

TOPE is what "Trans Pennine Express" with the O represent the bore of tunnels through the pennines
DdT is "Department for Transport"

The question with a service being "not fit for purpose" .... question no. 1 is "what is the purpose?".  The purpose at Pilning, and arguably in the past on the TransWilts, has been to meet contractual obligations. rather than boost passenger numbers.  And even while it had the wrong purpose ("meet spec") we boosted the TransWilts passenger number by 29% last year. In other words, a service can still have really good growth in passenger numbers even if the timetable isn't designed (or fit for) caring the major flows on the corridor.

Of course, it does help to have a purpose of "carrying lots of passengers" and a timetable that's ft for that purpose.  The new TransWilts timetable could have a few small improvements on the existing resource, but it's pretty well tuned for the new purpose.   And I would be disappointed not to see 200% growth this year.

Sunday 25th May.  Bright but cold after some really nasty wet weather yesterday. The 08:52 train ran for the first time today (rail replacement taxis last weekend, remember) so a first chance to count passengers.   No big 'event' organised to have people come out specially, though.

I started my day at Melksham Station ... where there's free car parking for rail users, bus most people seem to be walking or (on a weekday) taking the Melksham Rail Link bus. 



A good sprinkling of people getting onto the train - not bad as it's the very first time that the 08:52 (Sundays) to Swindon has run; full statistics are below.



And on through Chippenham to Swindon - here's a view of the lovely green countryside around Royal Wootton Bassett



And back down to Westbury, picking people up at each station along their way and unloading there for them to catch their onward services to the West Country and to Weymouth.

---

Here are the stats I promised you ...

08:52 from Melksham arrived with 14 from Trowbridge and 7 more joined; none got off.
2 x RDG^‡(resolve); 1 x OXF^» (Oxford - next trains); 2 x BTH^» (Bath Spa - next trains); 1 x PAD^» (Paddington (London) - next trains); 1 x SWI^» (Swindon - next trains)
7 off and 2 on at Chippenham
21/7

09:26 from Swindon left with 31 passengers on board
3 x TRO^» (Trowbridge - next trains); 4 x WSB^» (Westbury - next trains); 7 x TQY; 8 x WEY; 1 x PLY^» (Plymouth - next trains); 1 x WRM; 1 x CCY; 1 x CPM^» (Chippenham - next trains); 4 x WOO; 1 x FRO^» (Frome - next trains)
1 off and 5 on at Chippenham
0 off and 3 on at Melksham
3 off and about 10 on at Trowbridge
(much of that extra traffic at Trowbridge changing for West of England service)
(good to see the ongoing Weymouth connection was 5 cars with good space)
38/3

10:32 from Westbury
26 on from Westbury
About 10 off and 8 on at Trowbridge (onward count was 24)
3 off and 4 on at Melksham where I left the train
28/7

12:07 train from Swindon to Westbury called at Melksham
20 on from Chippenham
1 off and 5 on at Melksham (5 x TRO)
25/5

These should be compared against a target average ridership of 20 people per train on the Trowbridge / Chippenham section once the service is fully bedded in - in other words from December 2014 to December 2015.  So next year we would be looking for 80 people across those trains (and presumably expecting something around a half to two thirds of that this year - say 50).  Achieved this morning - 112 ... and pretty well everone happy and going to tell their friends, so it can only grow.

Is the 08:50 Melksham to Swindon running?   According to a phone call I made last night, it is.  Change at Canterbury (walking from East to West), St Pancras and Paddington.

WHAT?

It turns out that my informant had misheard my request and was giving me times from Aylesham, in Kent where (by some amazing co-incidence) there is also an 08:50 departure ....

OK ...I have some feedback (at least) on the button when you press it now.  Not clever if you press the same button several times without refreshing the page, but at least you get some feedback the first time.

Note that the like button, and a listing of the likers of a page, is only shown to logged in members.

It's under test ... and as my Javascript it crap, it doesn't automatically refresh the page, so as yet you get no confirmation of your action.   I'm going to leave it at that for tonight - I've had some fun doing something I wasn't supposed to have the time for today, but it's something I've wondered about in the past ....

Still there (physically) ... it was the venue for the ACoRP^▸ (Association of Community Rail Partnerships) briefing last week - a very informative day for Lee and me which has great benefits on helping us forward with supporting the TransWilts train service.   You will already have seen some reports posted that benefit from the day, and no doubt there are more to come 

Here's one that has me stumped ... an enquiry from a local contact who mistakenly thinks I know everything about train fares.

Booking online with FGW^▸ (First Great Western) ... from Melksham to London and then onto underground stations ... pulldown menu offers lots of ticket zones.   Now - even assuming you know what these zones are - I can only get a price for Zones 1-6, otherwise I'm told that there are "no fares have been found for your selected service".  My contact had a final destination in zone 2 ...

My contact tells me he gave up and has bought an advance Chippenham to London (Paddington) ticket from theTrainLine and is having it posted to him, just like he's done in past years 

Too late for this booking ... but why are all those zones offered?   They don't seem to work from Chippenham either, by the way.

Been researching a bit more ... analytics report for last month attached as an image.   Our figures for mobile are relatively low.

A very busy AGM^▸ (Annual General Meeting) of the Melksham Railway Development Group ... officers ...
Chair - Peter Blackburn; Secretary - Sion Bretton; ViceChair - Graham Ellis; Treasurer - John Money, with others present forming the new committee.  Next dusty IRL meeting 5th September, but lots happening in the meantime. As well as MRDG^» (Melksham Railway Development Group - about) matters, we covered TransWilts CRP^▸ (Community Rail Partnership) matters .

* Stakeholder update (which was circulating amongst the team yesterday) now amended and approved - see it at
http://atrebatia.info/may2014_stakeholder.pdf
This is a background document for our submission to the First Great Western stakeholder's report, so it's written for readers with some rail knowledge / background who, however, are not familiar with the TransWilts

* We discussed the FGW^▸ (First Great Western) / Community Rail Partnership agreement document that has been widely circulated amongst our members (and also to four other CRPs) and from a TransWilts view, we endorse and approver the direction taken. This will let the TransWilts CRP move forward in an even more integrated and business-like way ... much of the practise called for is in any case good business sense, and as we are already looking at the cost v the benefit of projects and elements of projects, it lays down a network of understanding for where we are already.

* We discussed the 10th ACoRP^▸ (Association of Community Rail Partnerships) annual awards, and whether the TransWilts should be making any nominations this year; as the cutoff date is 20th June and (with one exception) the categories are all for complete projects, I suggested that it was too early to enter with everything being ongoing.   The meeting took a slightly different approach and concluded that certain activities were 'launch' projects/activities which could be regarded as already completed successfully, with us now moving in to the next phase.  And as such we plan to submit two projects to ACoRP

* We discussed the Department for Transport's consultation document for the 2015 to 2020 franchise.  There was disquiet in the current service on the TransWilts being described simply as "every 2 hours" when the very successful new service is in fact "every 2 hours off peak / hourly at peak times".  The consultation document suggest that the starting point for the new SLC^▸ (Service Level Commitment) (service level commitment) should be the current service level - which is perfectly reasonable if that's the true current level, and will be totally unacceptable to us if it's the level as stated in the consultation document, as it would allow a 25% cut in services / 50% cut in peak services / 75% cut in traditional 9-to-5 commuter journey opportunities.   MRDG has a number of longstanding members who remember the draconian cuts made in 2006 to a service that had grown (Melksham passenger numbers) 10 fold from 2001, and wishes to ensure that the same thing does not happen again.   On a more positive note, the group will be making inputs that suggest ways to develop the service positively and economically.

Figures were presented to the meeting reporting current traffic levels, modes of transport to and from the station, and an analysis of previous journey patterns by the people using the train - only 8% of them stated that they had been TransWilts users last year, so that's an awful lot of new traffic!   Also presented were customer aspirations / desires (much of this data from our Wiltshire Council partners in the CRP, to whom we give a vote of thanks  )

Ongoing traffic development continues, with members reporting that publicity and marketing is reaching them.

Inadequate bustitution arrangements on 4th and 5th May was discussed. It resulted in a journey time of 45 minutes from Westbury to Swindon being extended to 140 minutes with two vehicle changes along the way and included long waits, and also resulted in potential travellers being turned away due to the bus being unable to take all the things that people wanted to take (and could have taken) with them by train - dogs, push chair for the child on the day out.

We discussed inputs solicited via partners to Network Rail to help ensure a more positive response to engineering changes than has been happening of late with long road closures while bridges are rebuilt.

Finally, we're all going to be walking in the Melksham Carnival parade on 12th July, handing out information about Melksham's train services ahead of the summer school holidays to all the hordes of people who usually watch the parade.   We'll be turning it into a bit of a showcase with an invite to other groups and individuals to come to Melksham by train earlier in the day before heading out on the 20:02 after the parade.  Put this date in YOUR diary! ...