TransWilts to Weymouth - “Days out at the seaside”

A history / update written this morning in a answer to a question - and a useful update for others!

Although the Swindon to Westbury and Westbury to Weymouth railway lines were built as the first through route in the area, these days they have separate services - both more frequent than they used to be, but much less frequent that they really should be. Neither service is to a “clock face” pattern and that results in, frankly, more or less random connections.

Experience suggests that passengers from Swindon / Chippenham / Melksham are more likely to want to connect / carry on south east from Westbury to Salisbury and Southampton than to Yeovil and Weymouth, and our survey last autumn of all departing passengers from Melksham over a three day period (Thursday, Saturday, Sunday) . There’s an element of that being due to the connections working better that way, but not a big enough element for the Weymouth line being the priority goal. That is, though, time, season and weather dependent, which makes service planning interesting.

In the summer of 2011, we had just 2 trains each way per day on the TransWilts line and we were looking to convince the powers-that-be that we should have some more. Five requirements were stood in our way, one of which was “prove you can get people onto trains” and in order to do that we arranged (and arranged finance for) and extra Sunday morning service to give a joined-up day out opportunity to Weymouth. Saturdays were ruled out for various reasons, including the fact that services were already at capacity on summer Saturdays and the line / trains / station could not cope. The excellent day-out opportunity to Weymouth which is available on Sundays - now all year - can be traced back to this trial, and to its resuming for the summers of 2014 / 15 / 16 / 17 after which it’s carried on even through the winter.

The summer of 2015 brought engineering works in the Bristol area throughout August, and as a result the summer Saturday relief train - a long distance train with 8 carriages - ran to Weymouth via Swindon and the TransWIlts. The extended journey and lack of calls at intermediate residential stations from Keynsham to Bradford-on-Avon meant there were real concerns as to whether it would take (m)any passengers, and so for that summer only we had it available to make marketing use of. However, for subsequent years, the train has resumed its regular route, and Weymouth capacity on summer saturdays remains such that a significant marketing of the day trips from Swindon / Chippenham would be unwise. We keep an eye on things, and for summer 2018 the relief train is scheduled to be a different type of train. The 8 carriage long distance trains are being replaced by others which are not cleared to run to Weymouth, and so the alternative used will just be a train of the regular type used on the line, available on Saturdays because there’s not the peak commuter traffic in and out of Bristol.

So - where does that leave “TransWIlts to Weymouth”?

It remains an important route / journey - but not the route / journey that the line’s performance and potential is judged on.

Westbury to Swindon services these days are based on the pre-2014 service of 2 trains each way per day, plus five or six extra return trips from first thing in the morning. The last trip is around 18:30 from Westbury, and about 20:00 from Swindon. The pre-2014 service on Saturday is, alas 08:22 and 1506 from Westbury (and 15:22 and 21:06 from Swindon) which is great for a day out in Swindon, but not for days out the other way. And for the first three years of the additional services, we weren’t able to address the lack of them being operationally joined up to other services - as a trial, the train operators needed to be able to withdraw it when it failed to reach the targets they had set.

We now have a permanent service specified at 8 trains per day each way (versus 2 in the past), and 9 return trips running Monday to Friday. And timetables need to change from next January with main line services between Swindon and Chippenham, and through Westbury, having new trains that can make faster journeys - so that where our local train could previously run there’s now an express, and where there was an express there’s now an available line. Good news is that now we can integrate, there are options available and we can talk with GWR^▸ ; slightly less good news is that the draft timetables so far seen are all about getting the expresses right, then shoving in the local trains to meet the franchise specification where they’ll fit. We are working with GWR on that to remove some of the more unfortunate side effects, and they are very, very busy - but an open door for mutually beneficial tweaks.

One of the things we’ve looked at in recent years is running another round trip of the local train each evening - the current Saturday last train from Westbury leaves a significant gap not only for passengers out for the day in Weymouth, but for others too. Sadly, the costs quoted are astronomic because an extra train crew would be required, and as a simple add-on it hasn’t been viable, and won’t be for next year either. However, there are multiple re-speciications coming up from the Department for Transport, and indeed an ongoing study at their request on the Swidon - Westbury - Salisbury - Southampton route, the fall out of which may very well be a daily evening service. A further fallout is the release of resources at Westbury which could / should allow much-requested extra services (from Bristol) via Frome to Yeovil and perhaps beyond. I am aware of much of the thought process and indeed some of the detail of this work, and it’s likely that one of many improvement outcomes would be better connections from the TransWilts onto (and back off) the Heart of Wessex line towards Weymouth.