Report requested by GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) to be aware of any local issues for next time. If you used TransWilts during this period and feel I have missed anything, please let me know!

1. The staff at Chippenham were helpful, knew what they were doing, polite - good job.  Very brief personal interaction with platform staff at Trowbridge - also helpful.  No personal feedback nor feedback concerning Bath staff - assume no news is good news.  No operational staff to comment on at Melksham. On Swindon, Bob advises "My experience of the staff at Swindon was also good.  Use of the PA^▸ (Public Address) to make manual announcements was evident as well as extra people on the platform."

2. On train staff excellent as ever - with one exception, which is not necessarily engineering specific.  Final train of the day (from Chippenham) arrives at Melksham. Around 10 waiting to join; 8 get on, other couple ask "Is this the Bath Train". Reply was "no, this is the Westbury train". Couple stand back, train leaves. Couple ask me (I had got off the train) "when does the train to Bath come along".   Ooops!

3. Very few passengers taken by surprise; most aware of the engineering and indeed weekend traffic was decimated.

4. Melksham Station car park during the week went from 75% full to virtually empty as those regular passengers who have the option of driving (all the way to Swindon?)

5. Replacement of the two peak trains from Melksham to Swindon during the week (07:20 and 07:49) with one (scheduled at 06:59) was just about OK.  But then to cancel the remaining train on 2 mornings out of the five (40% cancellation rate) was an appalling thing to do.  On one morning, taxis were provided; on the second morning, customers were told to wait for the 08:06 and eventually reached Swindon at 09:20 (versus 07:48 or 08:18 during normal service)

6. Signage at Trowbridge station was criticised as it showed departure times for trains to Chippenham, but with no indication of onward connection time (thus arrivals) into Swindon. Customers asking at Trowbridge were advised to look at posters at Chippenham for Swindon connections - "we can't put anything without the GWR logo up here".

7. Some doubt as to validity of tickets from Trowbridge to Swindon during the engineering. Passengers being advised by ticket staff at Trowbridge that "restrictions were relaxed" and indeed passengers who normally travel via Melksham  were travelling via Bristol Parkway.  On the days the first train from Westbury to Chippenham was cancelled, this route was indeed the only way for people from Westbury and Trowbridge to get to work in Swindon on time!  Journey planner did not seem to be offering this option though (I only took a  brief look).

8. Question I was asked - why are through trains not replaced by through buses?  Passengers on 8th, 9th and 16th July would normally have had a through train from Westbury / Trowbridge / Melksham to Swindon, but on these days not only did they have to use a bus (understandable / accepted) but they had to change from one bus to another in mid-journey!

9. Bristol - Bath - Chippenham - Swindon is very much a local commuter service with heavy peak loadings, making good use of 2 trains per hour of 8 carriages each at normal times. A reduction of the frequency to hourly from Bristol and Bath to Chippenham, and a reduction of some train from 8 to 2 carriages, received adverse comment. I observed 2 car trains leaving both Bristol and Chippenham full and standing to an uncomfortable level ("overloaded" and "rammed" were some of the kinder words used!).  Realistically, a 3 carriage train every half hour would have worked well - keeping the same number of travel options, and reducting capacity from 16 to 6 carriages per hour on the flow.

10. 16:53 - train leaves Chippenham on time for Bath and Bristol.  16:55 - coach arrives from Swindon.  Friday evening.  Spot the problem - unhappy customers having to wait for the next train which wasn't scheduled until 18:03.

11. Saturday buses Chippenham to Swindon ran hourly, replacing 2 or 3 trains per hour. Buses failed to connect with trains arriving from Westbury / Trowbridge / Melksham (40 minute wait in Chippenham), so the 28 minute (Melksham to Swindon) journey became a 93 minute journey. With coach (40 minutes Chippenham - Swindon) replacing train (18 minuted for a 153), journey should have taken less than an hour, not more than an hour and a half.    GWRHelp told me "Hi. I don't have the specifics for this I'm afraid but other services are connections are being carefully considered during scheduled works." - in other words "your service isn't the priority for making connctions work"; bit of a falsehood there, as had the bus been running every 30 minutes like the train does, there would have been no problem.  A customer suggested to me that services were intentionally weak to discourage large numbers of passengers from using replacement services.

12. We have built up a small but growing passenger base of commuters from Swindon and Chippenham into Melksham.  It's stunted because an 06:12 departure / 06:38 arrival is rather early. During engineering, the 06:12 passenger had to catch a bus at 05:27 go get to Melksham for 06:38.    A bus also left Swindon at 06:20, and train left Chippenham for Westbury a few minutes after the bus arrived, but that train called only at Trowbridge, failing to stop at Melksham.  An arrival into Melksham at around 07:25 from Chippenham would have been ideal for these people, and it would have also provided a connection from Melksham at Trowbridge to Bath and Bristol, in place of the normal connection at Chippenham.   Why on earth did you miss out Melksham on this train??

13. There is a significant commuter flow from Chippenham to Reading and to Paddington. Was consideration given to routing commuters from 10th to 15th July via Trowbridge, with the every-two-hour Westbury to Chippenham shuttle increased to hourly (could have been - journey time less than half an hour!) and the London - Reading - Bath - Bristol train making an extra connecting call at Trowbridge?   I suspect that could have saved your numbers on buses, and if connections worked "the other way" at Trowbridge too, could have effectively increased capacity and frequency on the Chippenham - Bath - Bristol flow (would have done wonders for TransWilts numbers too ;-) )

14. I travelled from Bristol to Melksham late afternoon of the Thursday. For a normal week, I'm delighted that the A to Z lists Melksham, as that helps resolve whether passenger have to catch the train via Chippenham or via Trowbridge to connect with the TransWilts. (a) I went to the enquiry counter on platform 3, but found that's closed. (b) I asked a platform staff member - as advised on the closed office door - and he advised me to catch the (?) 17:18 to Chippenham and change there; I was doubtful of this advice. (c) I looked at the A to Z, which did not indicate that it wasn't applicable [for many destinations?] that week. (d) I went up onto the platform for the Warminster train, based on a hunch this would be my best bet, and asked a staff member there.  She demanded to see my ticket to establish which route it was valid by (curious - I didn't know there were ANY Bristol to Melksham journeys that were limited to "via Trowbridge" or "via Chippenham", and in any case that's counter to the easing of routing restrictions as told by members of staff in the Trowbridge ticket office). Solved my question by going online and looking up station arrivals / departures for Trowbridge via a page that tracks trains real time based on National Rail data, which told me that Trowbridge was indeed my best route, and that the connecting TransWilts shuttle had been running to time.

15. Melksham had significant train changes for 9 days, but the special poster only provided service times for five of those days - 8th to 16th disruption, 10th to 14th schedule. And schedule was calls only; no indication of arrival times at destination which would be significantly varied. The poster remained on display on 15th and 16th even after it was expired; replaced during morning of 17th, I believe.  There was no GWR indication of train / bus times at the station.  The help point was working / displaying data some of the time - when it wasn't the only way to find out was to go online with your phone or use the help point to find out, speaking with someone with a script to be negotiated to find out what you really want to know.

16. The poster shown at Melksham Station and many other showed both a solid and a dotted line from Bath to Chippenham, indicating that buses ran some days and trains others.  It showed only a dotted line from Westbury / Trowbridge to Chippenham, appearing to indicate that buses were taking over the line for the whole 9 days.   The key DID^» (Didcot Parkway - next trains) have a solid line for TransWilts TRAINS, but there was no such solid line on the poster. 

17. We exchanged emails, Xxxxx, concerning low floor buses and coaches in the weeks before the engineering works.  The particular concern was from our quite low proportion of traditionally mobility impaired passengers, but added to by concern for the significant numbers who use pushchairs to help them transport children who are not yet old enough to be mobile in their own right.  Also concern about people who take their cycles (quite a few on TransWilts), but the message to them, as I understand it, was "sorry - you can't take your cycle this week". I was also approached by people taking instruments (up to cello size) to a concern in Chippenham on evening of 15th, who concluded they could get in from London via Westbury, but would have to use a taxi the following morning to leave because luggage wasn't to be accepted on the buses.  Much of the concern from the traditional group was because of the near-absence of Cabfiners low floor vehicles within 10 miles of Chippenham (2 taxis?).  In the end, it all worked out; observation showed a mixture of coaches and low floor buses, and I got no comments about any problems (no praise received either, but then that's par for the course!)

18. We received comments that the double deckers branded for Bath University were going so fast on the motorway that the passengers travelling in them felt unsafe - "Swaying around and overtaking everything - do they have speed regulators on them"?  Also comment that they were somewhat aged vehicles.  To a very great extent the vehicle provision is a "no win" - what people really want from Chippenham to Swindon is a smooth ride in less than 20 minutes - and that's called a "train" ;-).

19. I travelled on the 17:23 from Chippenham (to Melksham) on 15th July. 2 carriages, good passenger flow - used by 51 people.  Many of the passengers would have been regulars on the 17:36 from Swindon.  The connecting bus into the 17:23 would have left Swindon at about 16:40, and this provides us with an indicator that we have a significant number of passengers who would be able to move forward from a 17:36 to a 16:48 train off Swindon to help relieve pressure off the 17:36 until the December 2018 timetable revamp.  The 51 people is especially impressive when you consider the drop of car based passengers from Melksham, and the cancellation of the commuter train up that morning (points 4 and 5).

20. Over 20 people used the 19:32 on Saturday 15th July from Westbury to Chippenham - quite remarkable as te last train on a Saturday is usually the 18:32.  With the awful ongoing connections at Chippenham to Swindon on that day, it may well have been the busiest service of the day.  Evidence that it should run every day of the week - not just Sunday to Friday as it is at present.

21. The late round trip on Saturday 15th July attracted between 15 and 20 passenger journeys in each direction.  Northbound this was a "new" train; southbound, it replaced the 21:08 off Swindon, but ran considerably later from Chippenham as it waited for the bus from Swindon that left just after normal train time.

22. A comment from a passenger whom I know by sight that it’s really good to see me on the train - “you’re the only one we see who’s looking to the line’s future”. Background - I’m a regular traveller but with an irregular pattern, so I probably cover a lot of trains that other’s don’t, and I make a point of dressing so it’s obvious I’m with TransWilts.

Overall - people can and do understand that these works had to be done. There were feelings that some of the alternatives were provided down to a budget (and designed to put people off travelling) and that some of the information could have done with broadening. There were a handful of very interesting longer term learning points (19 through 21) for TransWilts away from the engineering.

Good news is that this feedback plus some clarifications has been fed into the GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) system and should form part of the review / learning stuff.  Of course, they've done lots of these before so I suspect that there's not too many new things to them.  But it does no harm to beat a couple of drums so that choices are better informed for subsequent possessions.