**snip**
Melksham Station closed in 1966. A single train path through each way each day for a year or two after, then a summer Saturday only train for a few more years. Otherwise the only use was for freight, diversions and the occasional special.
**snip**
Apologies in advance for the following: I've been enjoying someone's holiday photos from Switzerland.
Off topic, and there are reasons of course (and not casting aspersions on Melksham): looking at population centres and the locations of various stations, it's curious that the entirety of the Somerset and Dorset and certain of its associated lines went*, but the entirety of the Wilts Somerset and Weymouth, save for one of its branches, is in use today.
An electrified Somerset and Dorset, along with one or other of
BR▸ 's plans to sort the Midford to Bath shenanigans... though plan 'B' - Midford, Monkton Combe, tunnel through to a Bristol-facing junction into the
GWR▸ line, might not have been entirely popular with the residents of Widcombe and the prospect of four-tracking Bathampton - Newton Fields even less so.
Mark
*That listed signalbox in Bournemouth whose staff would have accepted trains heading for... places north. Is it out of use now?
