Agreed, ... and I also agree with you to allow plenty of time ... but


If you're in an unfamiliar situation and a curved ball is thrown at you, you seek help, don't you?  It's all very well for us here to have knowledge and hindsight, but the person here (who, as I understand was confirmed not be be a chancer) probably didn't have a degree in railway law and the fares system.

I'll give you cynical and cautionary ... but I certainly did not intend to come across as bitter - sorry if it read that way.

Oh come on - no.s 3 and 4 are clearly a couple who have had an argument and aren't talking to each other.  They're making up by text ... just look at the body chemistry 

Welcome to the forum, BristolBoy.

You're spot on - in fact I first did the calculation assuming a cost of employment of 30k per person, but then used 25k on the basis that I wanted a figure that no-one could argue were too high.

Which industry were you comparing with??

I've got to make a day round trip to London for each of the next five weeks, potentially travelling in peak and never sure until the day as to the exact train I'll catch.

5 Open returns would cost me 146 x 5 = 730.00
compare that to 5 return trips made in the same week on a season ticket = 233.20

If I'm bulk buying five return trips like the weekly season ticket folks do, shouldn't I be able to get them for 233.20 ?

? What is "5905" ?  I was thinking Northern Ireland and a wild guess of Larne Harbour

I sat down and watched Panorma last night - "Train Fares - taken for a ride"

Brought home just how *much* of a difference a change in franchise to a longer period one could bring.   At times, we seem to look at the immediate detail but actually there might be much more - both positive and negative - to it.  I'm afraid I dispair at times when I hear people objecting to logical changes for the medium to the long term in case it removes some quirk of the fare system that saves them money.   Folks - such quirks are often under the control of the franchise holder, and any new holder could withdraw - as I understand it - Groupsave or very low cost advanced fares more or less at a stroke.

What did I pick up on

* 600 staff involved in blame attribution for delays.   There are 1,340 staffed and around 1,100 unstaffed stations on the network, so for every 2 staffed stations more or less there's an extra member of staff looking to shift the blame for delays. So the employment cost of this lot is probably around 15 million pounds.   Now - what could we do with a half of that?

* Network Rail are accused of wasting 30% of their expenditure.   They didn't seem to dispute that they waste - just how much they waste (!).  And they're taking on MORE staff so that they can make their accounting more open to the public.

* Warwick Parkway - NR^» (Network Rail - home page) quoted over 13 million, Chiltern did it for 5 million.

* Won't know if Reading is on budget until it's completed - by which time it's too late.

Amongst other things ...

I'm quoting this as a sideshoot of a discussion between moderators, to remind us what an enormous difference it can make when one company is replaced by another, and/or when the specification is wrong ...



We do indeed ... and not just those of us in Melksham.  Wessex Trains increased services from 2 to 5 each way per day in 2001, and steadily built up the use of rail by passengers travelling from Frome, Westbury and Trowbridge up to Swindon, and also a surprising amount of traffic on such journeys as Chippenham to Salisbury and Southampton.

When I first got involved in "matters rail" in August 2005, just after the previous Great Western franchise consultation had been completed (and very few of the users had known it was happening!), I asked the ORR^» (Office of Rail and Road formerly Office of Rail Regulation - about) if they could tell me growth and usage figures for the line. They came up with "we don't have a measure for the line - the best indicator is ticket sales for journeys to / from Melksham" and quoted me figures showing a compound growth rate of 35% per annum ... and I knew when I looked at the SRA^» (Strategic Rail Authority - about) / DfT specifications for the future service, assuming a growth rate of less than 1%, that something, somewhere, wasn't quite right ...

It was sad - very sad - to see and hear some of the individual stories of regular commuters who had the services they had come to rely on AXED from under them in December 2006.  Rail staff may have been redeployed, but some of the railway's former customer lost their jobs because they couldn't get to work any longer / couldn't cope with the different and much less convenient public transport they had to use.   Others struggled on for a while - accepting the 90 minute longer day, or travelling from Frome to Swindon with us to 2 changes where previously they had had a direct train, and with a train performance so bad in January 2007 that we felt that someone had really failed badly in setting up the new timetables / diagrams / stock required.  A number of them stuck it our for a few weeks but had to give up and find new jobs too.

Rosy tinted spectacles over Wessex?   No - the service still wasn't advertised / properly marketed, and amongst users had a reputation for being late and not always turning up. With those two things fixed, my goodness it could have been growing even faster, and we might have known about the previous consultation and even managed to have retained the service that Wessex had grown.

I was reminded by this letter from my mailbag that we haven't mentioned RWB of late 


In a nutshell, Royal Wootton Bassett is still very much there and in everyone's view.

The case for a TransWilts service to run hourly in the peaks, and at least once every 2 hours has been made from economic, business and operational viewpoints, and public business and community surveys have been done based on this service in order to learn about the local reception to such a service.  And in the summer, a trial service of extra trains was run on 8 Sundays to test if we really could get people to use extra trains.

All of the cases / surveys / trials have come out  exceptionally positive - not really a surprise when you think about it, as the TransWilts is not branch line to a terminus where everyone has to change mode away from rail at one end - it's connections all around.  And the TransWilts links links 4 SSTCs^▸ (Strategically Significant Towns and Cities) (Strategically significant towns and cities), with heavy growth projected, in just 57 miles of railway.

The case for a service at a decent level stands very much on its own - with trains calling at existing stations only.    And it needs to - we can't loose the chance of sorting out Trowbridge to Swindon, Chippenham to Salisbury and Melksham to anywhere issues because the only case made depends on the re-opening of a station somewhere else, with the effect that would have on timescales, bids, capital programs, etc.  HOWEVER ...

The operational study HAS also include the stopping of all trains twice more along their route - once at Royal Wootton Bassett, and once at Staverton.  Those studies have been made with the existing rolling stock (taking the trains with the poorest acceleration that might be used), but looking at the service level which will be run when the line from Swindon to Chippenham is electrified (worst case testing again), and it's confirmed that even in this scenario there are no problems with making the extra stops.

There is little point in getting a station built if there's nothing passing that can realistically stop there.   That's the longstanding issue with Corsham, and indeed the current situation at Royal Wootton Bassett too - the Department for Transport's current consultation on the next Greater Western franchise is touting the idea of cutting stops out rather than adding them in, to give faster end to end journeys and to save money too.  But ... add in a regional fast train (as opposed to intercity express) that passes through the town, and it's more practical and cheaper to build a station - it doesn't need to have platforms anything like as long - lower cost to operate, and has less negative effect on city to city traffic on which passengers really don't want to feel that they're on a "stopper".

Various inputs are going in to the consultation - from Wiltshire Council, from TransWilts Rail CRP^▸ (Community Rail Partnership), from our (Chippenham) MP^▸ (Member of Parliament), from the Chamber of Commerce, etc ... and we are co-ordinating those as best possible.  They're asking for the TransWilts service level to be set at that for which the case has been made.   And requesting a specification which allows for the additional stops which we know are possible to be added in later - i.e. allowing an extra few minutes of running time to allow for Royal Wootton Bassett station.  Our MP, indeed, specifically mentioned the station in his speech in parliament in December - although of course that was as something of an aside as it's off his turf - see
   http://www.theyworkforyou.com/whall/?id=2011-12-20a.389.0&s=hames+transport#g397.2

There's more, too ... the LSTF^▸ (Local Sustainable Transport Fund) bid currently under way is for a substantial sum which includes capital improvements up to and around the TransWilts - right across Wiltshire. It's all very much on the table and agenda, though there's very much more to putting in a station than there is simply to changing timetables to run a service on lines which currently have spare capacity, with stations already open. So we're hoping to have more Sunday trains again this summer, but you shouldn't expect them to stop at RWB.  It's unlikely that a station would be open and running from the first day of the next franchise (1st April 2013) either.   But it's being facilitated.

You - and other residents - could do so much to help push this forward, in fact:

1. It would be really useful if you could add your support to the consultation request too ;-) ... and to ask your MP to provide support.   I don't think he spoke about it in the debate. Consultation document is at
   http://assets.dft.gov.uk/consultations/dft-2011-36/great-western-franchise-replacement.pdf

2. It would be really useful for other organisations too around the town to do so. And especially involve the MOD [Lyneham changes], and Wiltshire Council [ Developer's Contributions]

3. An active group in Royal Wootton Bassett, pressing for the station and based on the real prospect of having trains that could stop, would help all of us press our cases.

The various community groups working on / with the line made quite a difference last year - TransWilts Rail and that work took a summer sunday service which in previous years consisted of three single journeys carrying with an estimated 40 passenger journeys in total and in co-operation with First, Wilthshire Council, the Chambers of Commerce and sponsors raised that to five single journeys (66% increase) carrying between them an average of over 500 passenger journeys (1150% increase).  Not bad - done using a train in "marginal time" which had been sitting in a siding waiting for its diagram.

In December, the Melksham Railway Development Group's Santa train conveyed 150 each way - a pretty well loaded 3 car train by the time that you consider 20 or 30 members of the public who weren't with the group.

In both these cases, local publicity and community support resulted in strong loadings - indeed, both were so successful that we had to restrict further advertising (in the summer) and stop selling tickets to see Santa, turning people away (in December) - and we can do so again and on a much heavier scale with trains that make round trips possible.

It had been intended to formalise the constitution of the TransWilts Community Rail Partnership around now, but with an open question as to who will be operating the services in summer 2013, and with the strong desire on the community's part to put the only logical case for the next franchise, which involves a significant increase in services, we've concluded it's better to leave it informal until after the franchise has been let, but provide a strong draft constitution as part of the case to indicate how the community is ready and prepared to support the new service.

The draft constitution is at http://atrebatia.info/admin.html - comments welcomed / fine tuning possible. The draft constitution (version 0.2) was produced by representatives of / with major inputs from:
^ Chambers of Commerce
^ Railway Development Group (Melksham)
^ Current service user
^ Train Operating Company
^ Members of neighbouring Community Rail Partnerships
^ Wiltshire Council
We are fortunate to have a strong team of informal partners, willing to provide help / advise and each with skills in multiple areas.

"To Oxford from the West" has been noticed as being one of the quietest line-based boards on this forum - probably because the through services were withdrawn during the previous franchise, and the alternative - which involves a double back at Didcot, often means a long wait (good connections for this journey have not been a priority in timetabling).  And at times of un-reliability there are two services to go wrong if you have a connection to make ...

However, there are definite travel flows to Oxford from Swindon and beyond - the old service was popular and was not withdrawn because it was a set of empty trains.   Indeed, I've been quite a regular Melksham to Oxford traveller, but that's become a so-and-so of a journey by train, progressively harder rather than better over the last 10 years.

As part of the next franchise consultation, the matter of this service was raised / mentioned in a parliamentary debate just before Christmas:

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/whall/?id=2011-12-20a.389.0&s=hames+transport#g397.2

Connections and interlinking are important - so the whole things looks like a sane package to me (but I am not an expert on many of the other aspects raised by Duncan Hames).   I would certainly switch back to rail for Oxford journeys if I could do it with a single change with a reasonable wait time to make the journey.  Better (selfishly) a through service, but that would cause issues for Corsham aspirations and probably not be possible "clock face" due to single line issues south of Thingley.

Question - do electrification plans include the wiring of the west to north curve at Didcot?

it was.

1. Westbury
2. Taunton
3. Lackham (near Lacock, near Thingley Junction, between Chippenham and Melksham)
4. Broughton Gifford between Melksham and Trowbridge
5. Kennet and Avon Canal near Trowbridge
6. Sorry - it's a model railway
7. Green Park station, Bath
8. Weymouth
9. Foxhangers, near Devizes
10. King's Cross

Many thanks for completing the poll ... rather confirms my guess that most of us who look at these quizzes only recognise a few of the places.

One or two were quite easy ... ranging to one or two which I would be amazed if anyone got. And I went pretty wide on my "transport and related linking to the South West" theme.

1. The franchise consultation contains some questions on fares ... and indeed fares are an emotive issue at times.

2. As I understand it , regulated fares are set by the main company on a route but within narrow rules set down by the government, whereas unregulated fares are totally up to the TOC^▸ (Train Operating Company).

So ... under a new franchise, perhaps with a different company at the helm, there could be dramatic changes to unregulated fares, right?  Advanced fares could (in theory) no longer be available?  GroupSave could be withdrawn? Off peak times changed?

Can anyone confirm my conclusion so far, before I draw some following conclusions?

Thanks!

For this winter, it looks like Club 55 is only available in certain countries of the United Kingdom:

Scotland, 16 Jan to 31 March
http://www.scotrail.co.uk/club55

Wales, 8th March to 28th March
http://arrivatrainswales.co.uk/Club55/

England - NOT AVAILBLE?

Doesn't make it look quite so united ...and a bit of a "postcode lottery".