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Looking for railway groups and users - Swindon, Salisbury, Southampton

Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2005-11-06 17:49:16 - Graham Ellis

I'm looking for rail passengers - travellers on the train from Swindon to Trowbridge, from Chippenham to Salisbury and from Melksham to Westbury. I want to find people who take a day trip from Chippenham to the Isle of Wight, who visit London for the day from Melksham, or who live in Swindon and have a business appointment in Southampton.

Do you know a railway user group in Swindon? Are you a councillor interested in good public transport links in Southampton? Do you feel that more people should use the railway in Salisbury? Are you concerned at the treats to cut trains in several directions from Westbury?

Do you commute into Swindon? Do you fight your way up the A350 from Trowbridge to Melksham or from Westbury to Chippenham in the rush hour every day?

We've got a good railway link from Swindon through Chippenham, Melksham, Trowbridge and Westbury to Warminster, Salisbury and Southampton. No - not an excellent one; just five trains a day but we need to USE IT or we'll LOOSE IT. It's under threat from December of next year - further details are on our Save the Train site.


What can YOU do?

1. USE the train.
2. Write to your MP, to the minister concerned (Derek Twigg) at the Department for Transport, and to his officials.
3. Get in touch ... so that we can co-ordinate information up and down the line; I know Melksham, but I'm not an expert on train services at Romsey or Dean, for example!

The picture illustrating this post is provided courtesy of Tony Seager. It shows what was left of Melksham Station in the 1970s ... between its closure in 1966 and reopening in 1985. Don't let's have this scene return!