Here we are - 1st September (2025).  The spirit of summer is over and here we are into the Autumn.  In Melksham, the KGV field is cleared from the Food and River Festival which was held over the last couple of days, and the season of meetings - 3.5 months through to mid December - starts.  I have far fewer meetings (and preps) coming up than I would have had at this time last year, no longer being on the Town Council, and no major trips are planned for the rest of the year, refilling mental and energy pots, catching up on writing and background work, catching up on things and works around the house, and letting finances catch up a bit too.

Coffee Shop

On the "Coffee Shop" forum - our train and other public transport forum - had 1,231 messages posted in August, with 133 new topics covered. Back up from a low point of 781 and 88 in May and now similar in volume to this time last year.  Specialist forums have shaken out since we founded the "First Great Western Coffee Shop" 18 years ago; our founding mantra of being a place that Joe Public can ask a passenger's question has been almost entirely replaced/outdated by social media such as Facebook, Twitter / X enquiry systems, searches with (now) AI results and so forth.  99% of the questions are answered elsewhere, and of the tiny proportion remaining, answers are often provided by a search that finds us rather than by someone signing up and asking. New members are rare.  So - where is the case for the Coffee Shop now?  It's in the club and comradely of the members, who have become dear friends, over the years.  We do keep up to date with rail (and other ways of getting around) news, in our section of the UK (and beyond too where interests and lessons are to be learned). Seventy members have been logged in over the last 24 hours as I write - and that's from a Sunday rather than a weekday, with another fifty or so here as guests.  The same regular members do visit day after day, week after week; guests tend to be different ones each day - stats tell me of two thousand four hundred arrivals from searches in August.  These figures are dwarfed by the traffic we get from automata indexing us to feed the search engines, AI systems, SEO companies and various nasties, but I am pretty sure of the figures I quote as real visits / people - UK for users and guests where I have the ability to see by country. 116 active users yesterday from the UK, 3 from Vietnam, 1 from China, 1 each from Germany, France and Ireland.

The Coffee Shop would not be what is is without the contributing members, the reading guests, and the fabulous team of moderators and administrators we have there. The "work" they do is fantastic - but yet it's not really work in all senses of the word.  Very often, just being there as a member and being part of the club that we have become is all that is needed; the powers vested to edit, move around, manage are rarely required and better described as tidying up when they *are* needed. For sure, we all keep eye out to keep the Coffee Shop safe - and that now has a legal definition of what we must do in addition to the moral one we have always followed.  There are 17 nasty things we look out for, and we even [are required, also] monitor how and when we look out; that's behind-the-scenes stuff; I do know it works because occasionally tools trigger to alert me, and we have a backboard on which the admins and moderators co-ordinate to give a smooth, consistent forum to our members and on which we can pass on and discuss ongoing issues and assign tasks as need be, and inform each other as to what we have done.

Looking forward, on the webmaster side, I need to make the Coffee Shop function better on mobile devices - we are some of the way there.  I need to shakedown the background server to cope with all the crawler traffic.  It would be useful to better integrate it with other social media - for example to help direct more readers our way.  Our internal searches are a bit awkward - we have an archive of 2,000 .pdfs, and 26,000 topics with an average of 15 posts in each, timetables and ticket sales information going back years, and its always a bit difficult to provide an easy way for members and casual visitors to see the wood for the trees - to find the answer to their question in amongst the big, big data we have.




MTUG, WWRUG, TWSW

Layers, like an onion.  Melksham Transport User Group, West Wiltshire Rail User Group, TravelWatch SouthWest.  For Melksham, for West Wiltshire, and for the South West as a whole.   Meetings coming up - MTUG committee on 18th, WWRUG on 17th (Trowbridge) and TWSW general meeting (Taunton) on 24th October.

I am involved at officer / committee member / board member level with all three. And plans to get myself and my responsibilities with them up to date on my return on 8th August and by the end of the month have come to nothing. A (very) little has been done, but being laid low with Covid took the wind out of my sails - not so much the physical issues but the dulling of the intellect and vast amounts of sleep meant that I have only been keeping routine stuff ticking along and have little opportunity beyond.  It has also been the holiday season, and when calling on / asking others, I have a lot of "out of office"s stacked up; of course, as people come back over the next few days for the most part, it will still take them time to work though their inbox and respond, and these days I don't have a "Town Council" hat to help me up their priority pile.

The rail industry is undergoing major change. And it seems to me that every thread of that has a major relationship with the Department for Transport, who are in financial control and directly o indirectly the puppeteer of virtually everyone in the system.   This is worrying when (sorry) it is very clear that the rail industry, directed by the DfT, cannot effectively manage or direct even the simplest of train services reliably.  This summer, 12% of trains scheduled to call at Melksham have been cancelled, and our service is ranked at 2123 out of 2638 stations - so we are not alone in having major issues. To give you a "control" to compare against, cancellation targets set on train operators are typically between 1% and 2%, and much over that results in a service - especially on a line where there won't be another train along in 15 minutes, that people cannot rely on.  Sometimes the railway lays on replacement buses which take far longer, involve changing at Chippenham with an ongoing wait there, and miss connections at Westbury - and they fail even to lay on alternatives more often than not, just telling you that you can get your fare or part of it refunded; that's not what people want, but rather they want to be take where they plan, at or near to the time that was advertised in the first place.

And in this mess - everyone is paid or in the pay or control of the Department for Transport and is looking to their own future - of their organisation, their income  and their personal career too. The description that "she did a good job defending the indefensible" in reply to a query by a Coffee Shop member to GWR hit the nail on the head.  Even TravelWatch SouthWest - supported over the years by operators - now finds itself indirectly (and not knowing how) funded with the agreement or otherwise of the DfT, and leaned heavily upon not to rock the boat. I may find myself in trouble even for making that comment if this somewhat obscure blog is actually read by anyone concerned.

Included in the "DfT web" are organisations like the Office of Rail and Road, Transport Focus, the Community Rail Network and then indirectly Community Rail Partnerships.  It worries my that at the present time, it is risky for any of them or their members (including our local CRP) to be critical or to press for solutions.  Good work is being done in looking ahead to the medium and long term, and in engaging with some of the more difficult to reach groups in our community, but engagement with as support of the case for getting reliably and meaningfully sorted is notably by its absence. I can understand a reluctance to bite the hand that feeds you; I was approached to see if I would like to join the local CRP board, but once it was clear to me that criticising this aspect outside the board would not be acceptable, I declined. I have to wonder at my position with TWSW too.


There IS a desire and a need for public transport improvement to, from and within Melksham.  I was in the park on Sunday at the Food and River Festival ... purely as a resident this year and not "marked" in any way. Acknowledge quite a number of people I know (quick wave or hi) - what I did note was that people who I don't know, but knew who I was, were predominantly asking me about the trains (and trains, you'll note - not the buses so much).



Town Council Stuff

I'm retired - but that does not stop me taking a positive and supporting interest in our town, in a measured way, nor does it stop me from being asked questions and for advice by residents especially, and occasionally by staff if they wish to tap in on transport. The new staff team has little reason to be aware of so much old wider experience I have, and at times I bite my tongue - "I could have told you that" when an issue comes out in public.

The Neighbourhood Plan has been completed; I came off the steering group in May because I am no longer a councillor, but friends have kept me informed in addition to Neighbourhood Plan stuff being far more available to the public than Town Council stuff.  Good to see it pass at referendum in July and already being in use to help inform forward planning decisions and then infrastructure spend.

The Blue Pool purchase has been completed by MTC but I have no further news.  Inevitably, the purchase will have resulted in extra costs starting initially with insurance, but the MTC budget is tight this year and I don't know how they will do it. Not exactly unforeseen, but there has be be a bit of "told you so" on my part; I did suggest a council tax precept for this year which would have covered the difference, but was voted down.  Thank you to the senior councillors who voted with me on that; until next March you have the new council from this May having to tighten their belts early in because of the decision of the old council in January. Such is our system.

I did not assist as a volunteer this summer at the Splashpad - I wasn't asked, perhaps because they knew I would have been unlikely to accept, and perhaps because they know better.  Similarly, no requests to assist at the Assembly Hall or with their leaflet / publicity and its distribution. The purpose of the leaflets was to help fill the hall by telling people what was going on and if all the events there are full, and the hall is booked out every day, then they are no longer needed anyway. Suits us (Lisa and I) as we have plenty else to do.

In our Melksham South, only three candidates were nominated for our 4-councillor Town Council ward. A fourth person was co-opted at a meeting a month later, but one of the original 3 has already resigned.  We have a bye-election coming up with calls for nomination next week.  As there were seven candidates for co-option and only 2 were chosen across the town, I am hopeful that there will be a context.  I have moved on in age and commitments, and the job has changed since May 2021, and although I have been approached by a couple of people I will not be standing, but please don't let my personal situation put YOU off - if you have got as far in this article as reading me, you are certainly the sort of person we need.

With my Travel and Transport hats, I look at total journeys and for that involves local walking and cycling within the town, access to NaPTANs (National Passenger Transport Access Network) points (stations and bus stops) and with consideration not only for the able bodies and unencumbered, but for everyone.   We have some good stuff, but some awkward points, some directions lacking, and some missing links.  I wrote much of this up a couple of months ago [date] and have had an "interested" response from one of our ward councillors, and a "Thank you" from the mayor.  To be followed up.

And Also

Personal stuff - I have so many and so much thought that I could and perhaps might (whether I should or not) write up as a book or modern-day equivalent as a blog and perhaps be more of an influencer.  The old data out there is huge and just like the searches mentioned above hard to filter.   In recent days, the mind is coming back and I may be able to make a start.  Early days - no reveal of too many ideas as yet.  But as this 1st September post is a checkpoint, worth a mention.

This will be shared on my blog - at https://grahamellis.uk/blog1706.html (that URL will give you my previous article for another hour or two) and expanded on selectively on social media..  It's much more forward than backward looking so the trips of so far that have brought me here are mentioned above just in passing.   I can tell you / suggest that, yes, I still have itchy feet and whilst physically around for the autumn you can expect more picture neat year which I will need to title for you because they won't exactly be obvious.  Clearly there may be some of Melksham and Taunton and Trowbridge and other places more local.