Melksham Station closed on 18th April 1966, as part of the Reshaping of British Railways under Dr Richard Beeching. Here's what it looked like around 1964.
The station was demolished, and the line reduced to a single track passing through, with just occasional freight trains passing, and with the odd passenger train on diversion.
Melksham Station re-opened in 1985 using a short stretch of the platform that remained, with a train to Swindon in the morning and back in the late afternoon as a commuter service. Various experiments were tried over the years, but none was successful enough to endure until the service was stepped up to 8 services each way per day in December 2013, forming the basis of the current service.
This current service has been a success and runs to this day. Single carriage trains are a thing of the past - there's now a minimum 2 carriages, and trains run 7 days a week all year, from early morning through to mid evening. An additional late evening service from Westbury at 21:15 and from Swindon at 22:30 commences next month.
The station is now almost unrecognisable even in a "Then and Now" picture. There's still a short stretch of the old platform in use, but it has now been much extended and resurfaced. A waiting room, ticket machine, next train displays, a cycle shelter and more have been provided. A new car park with electric charging points has been provided, and signs proudly direct you from the Town Centre to the station - less than 10 minutes from the Town Bridge.
As well as the physical changes, you'll notice a big change between the pictures that there are now people around - passengers using the trains. Current times (and new times for summer 2023) may be found at
http://www.mtug.org.uk/summer2023.html In 2005 (yes, 18 years ago) I first took an interest in the train service through Melksham launching what I expected to be a short project to "Save the Train"; there was talk at that time of the service being withdrawn. We had a four step campaign plan:
1. Make people aware that the service needed to be looked at
2. Get it looked at, with a view to working out what's appropriate
3. Take steps to actually get that appropriate service running
4. Work like **** in the community to make it work
Even for 2013, we had a definition issue with an "appropriate" service and studies suggested it could be either one train every 2 hours, or a better service of one train every hour. We were able to persuade the powers that be to run a 3 year trial of one train every 2 hours - the lower definition - and that was a huge success, with a forecast of 108,000 journeys per annum to from or through Melksham after 3 years of growth being met surpassed with 180,000 journeys being made in the first year, and quarter of a million in the second.
So what for the future? 1.
"Appropriate" for the next years is hourly, but the single track line now has a lot more freight too, and so something needs to be done to increase capacity.
2. The station is at the end of a cul-de-sac and only accessible from the Town Centre.
A new access path and cycle way is needed to Foundry Close or Scotland Road to allow passengers to walk to or from North Melksham and Melksham Forest
3.
Buses are needed to bring people to the station to catch their trains and to take them home when they arrive as Melksham continues to grow.
4.
Ongoing community support and publicity is needed to ensure that people know about the station and the service and there is a friendly face available to them to help with travel plans, fares and other information.
