Someone once joked to me that we mention "Melksham" along with any other word on this web site and soon we'll be top hit with the search engines.   Then they went and illustrated in with "Melksham Florist" which I suspect may have upset some of the town's more online flower sellers!

But the net does have its power along these lines and I've got two campaigns / events  that I want to shout about at the moment.

Firstly, you may have seen elsewhere on this site that I'm campaigning hard to get a fair deal for the stopping train service through Melksham. The secondary rail route that it's on (Swindon to Southampton, via Chippenham, Trowbridge, Warminster and Salisbury) is to be "discontinued" under the new Greater Western franchise that starts next year, together with the West of England sleeper train service,  and the majority of trains from Oxford to Bicester. There's quite an issue of principle here too ... it seems that if a line doesn't start at or end in London, then it's fair game for the people in Marsham Street . Please do have a look at our campaign to save the train and if you're a user, or an interested local group somewhere between Swindon and Southampton, please get in touch.

Second, for our latest newsletter we've surveyed the local hotels and Bed and Breakfasts ... we've come up with such an interesting collection of information about where to stay in Melksham and so we've put made it available at http://www.melkshamhotel.co.uk.  Unsually for a hotel / B&B site, we've published the direct contact phone numbers and email addresses for each of the places where you can stay in Melksham so that you can make your own booking.

Now ... am I supposed to be advertsiing these sites on "Opentalk". Hmm - that's an interesting question but I expect my fellow moderators may indulge me.   After all, the train service is a vital supply chain to many businesses including ours, and without accommodation in Melksham our bookings for training would be sparse indeed ... so in a way these are vital services to keep up (and this site) in business.

We've learnt a lot about running train services recently; it seems that to lease a one coach train would cost about 100k pounds per year and to provide a crew would cost about 3 times that. Fuel costs are neglibible by comparison, and payments to Network Rail for track access wouldn't be too high.  But, no, we have other plans under foot and we've not got the time to start getting involved in running the service ourselves - just wouldn't be practical ... but it's very interesting to know the prices!

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