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TransWilts rail - what picture represents us

Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2011-02-08 16:01:57 - Graham Ellis

Yesterday and today, I have been working in a team to put together major content for the TransWilts Rail web site.

ASIDE - if you have not yet completed our survey and you live or travel in Wiltshire, please do so ... NOW, [here - separate window opens]

End of aside.

My role has been largely to work on the pictures - we've got 8 stations and one potential future one on the line, each serving a community that would be linked via the service of around 10 trains a day each way. "A picture paints 1000 words", but which pictures should we use for places as different as Swindon and Dilton Marsh, as Salisbury and Melksham. They are all linked communities, but it's a celebration of the difference which means that people want and need to travel between them. If Westbury had exactly what Chippenham has, then there would be no need for anyone to travel. Brought home to me again, chatting with someone who's son is looking at a particular college course. It's not available in his town, but it *is* available in Chippenham, Trowbridge and Salisbury and - as the young man would start his course in September 2012, we may have one of our first year commuters.


And that also brings home the need for a service for those who cannot drive - that huge flow of college students who, as they reach the end of the years of mandatory education, specialize and need to travel further from home for the course that right for them.

Which pictures to I use to represent working commuters? To represent students? To represent leisure people? And how should we represent the towns on each of the pages - by pretty pictures, or by showing the rough (that economic investment and pride would help) with the smooth? Do we show traffic jams and bus connections? How many of the pictures should be rail interest, and what proportion should look at rail simply as a way to connect? Should we show housing, businesses? How far from the stations should we stray, and should we include pictures of special events as well as the day to day operations? How about historic pictures as well as the present day?

I've gone for a huge variety. You can leaf through 11 pages of 16 images each - [here - separate window] - and I've gone wide (very wide). I have included some leisure places that are a bus ride from the station, where there is or could be an excellent connection - so Stonehenge is in. The reasoning - from Chippenham, day trip to Salisbury and Stonehenge, because a pleasure with a decent TransWilts service. The one thing I have excluded is old pictures. Every one at present has (I think) been taken in the last 18 months. For this is a line with a future; we want people to come and celebrate the past in listed buildings at Chippenham station, and the cathedral at Salisbury - but the service is for now, and for 2012, 2015, 2018 ...

The picture I've added on this page is a Community Rail Partnership meeting - taken last summer. I really can't come up with ONE image to represent the line, so I thought I would show you some of our community members who are working to regain and retain the service.