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Melksham - no trains, no southbound buses through the town

Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2009-08-08 09:27:20 - Graham Ellis

There have been NO TRAINS AT ALL to Melksham for a week. And the town centre is closed to southbound traffic, sending the buses around the bypass, and the local "we know where to go" vehicles around the suburban streets. All of which does precious little immediate good for the businesses.

When Bath Road was closed at the turn of the year, the local traders were up in arms about the lost business, and when the railway was previously shut for 10 days in the summer of 2006, we arranged a "welcome back" party with some high profile attendees to help raise the profile, and ensure that we really DID get back a "25 minutes to Swindon" train, rather than a bus that would take about an hour.

At the meeting of the Melksham Railway Development Group last night, we discussed whether we should be welcoming the train back with a brass band (or a metaphorical brass band!) on Monday, and we decided against. We are reasonable confident in the new environment, about which I'll be writing more during this month, that the train WILL come back. On the previous occasion, the atmosphere was such that there was a serious risk of an attempt being made to "sweep it under the carpet" (as has happened at Norton Bridge, Watford West and other places) ... but this time is different. Not only is there sufficient visibility and support that people wouldn't dare to think they could succeed in making the train quietly go away, but also the environment and atmosphere is such that the decision makers have moved away from wanting it to go away, and towards wanting to find ways they can feed and water it, and have the seedling of a service we have at present grow - at least - into a plant that can survive and provide a useful crop of fruit, if not yet into a thumping great oak tree.


So I look forward to the end of the rail and road works, not with trepidation, but towards being able to move forward with the incremental improvements that these temporary closures are allowing to be provided.