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Melksham Railway Station - new information point

Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2010-09-13 08:27:16 - Graham Ellis

I collected a Perl course delegate off the train at Melksham station yesterday evening, and I was delighted to see that the new help point has been fitted.

The help point is very much more obvious than the old blue box, is "signed" clearly, and is located at what we consider to be the right place - just on the platform, close to the gate.


Information is one of the critically important things that's needed about any service if it's to be used - and it's also one of the things that the railways have been criticized for in the past. So it's fantastic to see this new facility - which replaces a system which used to give a short recorded message when you pressed a button.

At a glance, you can now see what trains are due, where they're going, whether they're on time (and where that information was collected), and even how many carriages long they are. You might not be going to Cheltenham today, but there's a marketing message in here ... as you catch your Swindon train you'll now be aware of where it goes - and you'll be aware of other services too. And that's an encouragement to use them.

The provision of this system is part of the franchise commitment made by First, so it's something they had to do ... except that they've gone one step further at Melksham in that they've put a "with screen" system in rather than just a single button / get a message replacement. I don't know how much influence our positive requests, pointing out the catchment of 25,000 people and the proposals for a lot more trains, influenced their decision to go that bit further ... but as far as we're concerned, it's a lot further and I want to say a big THANK YOU to First for doing this, and showing faith in the TransWilts service via Melksham.