Even in the dark of night, the train comes bearing passengers
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2014-09-28 21:38:27 - Graham Ellis
I've noticed how we've been getting a full, or nearly-full hotel ... with an empty, or near-empty car park recently. And it's happened again tonight. Four rooms out of five occupied (and full tomorrow night) and yet only one guest has brought her own car. I was down at the station meeting delegates coming on a course in Melksham off the train which got in at 20:30 - the final service of the day. Good to see the new shelter with lights, work being done on new cycle racks, and the foundations for the Ticket Vending Machine going into place.
For the third year of operation of the service (we're still in the first, remember!), we have a target of 20 users per train to, from, or through Melksham. And the 20:30 on an autumn Sunday evening is one of the services that I might expect to be below average. Well - I got that wrong, in the right direction - 6 people got off, 4 people got on and there were some 28 on the train as it pulled out - that means that we're well over the third year average target on a train that I would have expected to be one of the ones that's going to be significantly under ... 34 when I would have been happy with 15 for a very off peak train in order to reach year 3 target. Wild guess - if this keeps up, we'll be around 230,000 journeys for the year April 2014 to March 2015 inclusive. Wow!
I've noticed how we've been getting a full, or nearly-full hotel ... with an empty, or near-empty car park recently. And it's happened again tonight. Four rooms out of five occupied (and full tomorrow night) and yet only one guest has brought her own car. I was down at the station meeting delegates coming on a course in Melksham off the train which got in at 20:30 - the final service of the day. Good to see the new shelter with lights, work being done on new cycle racks, and the foundations for the Ticket Vending Machine going into place.