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July 25, 2006
Melksham Railway Calendar 2007
"Save The Train" - Pictures and captions for the TransWilts Train Calendar, 2007
January / February 2007
"The Train Home". The TransWilts service from Swindon to Salisbury provides a lifeline for towns and villages such as Melksham (pop 24,000), Dilton Marsh, Dean and Dunbridge.
March / April 2007
Lacock - where Fox Talbot took the first reversal process photograph - is largely owned by the National Trust. You can wander the steets amongst the houses, all hundreds of years old, and during the day visit the Abbey too. The Swindon to Westbury, Salisbury and Southampton train passes through Lacock; the nearest stations still open are at Chippenham and Melksham.
May / June 2007
Melksham is an old market town, mentioned in the Domesday book. Before the coming of the Great Western Railway to Wiltshire, it was larger that Chippenham and Swindon together. These days, it's a pretty town of some 24,000 people served by Swindon to Westbury, Salisbury and Southampton trains that call 5 times daily in each direction.
July / August 2007
The National Trust opens their gardens at the Courts, Holt, throughout the summer and it's a lovely afternoon out. The Swindon to Westbury train passes through Holt, and there and First run a bus service (237) from Melksham on that line to Holt.
September / October 2007
First Great Western now provides the lifeline to many towns and villages throughout the West of England. Here's a Westbury to Swindon train leaving Melksham station one day. It looks quiet, so you may be surprised to learn that there's an average of 32 people travelling on each single coach train on this line, and that traffic has grown 8 fold in the past 5 years.
November / December 2007
Each December, Santa Claus catches the train from Swindon to Melksham a few weeks before Christmas. Here's Santa with many of the children at Melksham station ... a fund day was had by all, and we were reluctant to wave him off.
In answer to First Great Western's request for public submissions of pictures for their 2007 calendar, I've entered each of the above. The pictures show and talk of a thriving service through a beautiful part of the country; we're hoping that's going to be the case in 2007 too, but it looks more than likely that the service will be withdrawn apart from a token train from Swindon just after 6 in the mnorning, and another that will get to our home town of Melksham at about quarter past 7 at night. See our save the train site for an update
Posted by gje at July 25, 2006 05:30 PM
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