TransWilts Community Rail Partnership

The TransWilts Community Rail Partnership was formally launched at a meeting in Trowbridge on Friday March 26th 2010. The forty people present unanimously agreed to back the scheme and to set up a steering group to progress it.

The TransWilts line links the five largest towns in Wiltshire - Swindon, Salisbury, Chippenham, Trowbridge and Melksham - and also serves Westbury and Dilton Marsh. After years of organising, and lobbying councils and government departments, the campaign is poised for a breakthrough. Research shows the demand is there and investment in extra trains and improved stations would pay off. This ghost railway could become a transport artery for the whole county, carrying several hundred commuters to work and back each day and taking cars off the A36, A350, A303 and other roads. Find out about the plan and help to get it up and running. All welcome.

More information at www.transwilts.org.uk

What is a Community Rail Partnership, and why for the TransWilts? http://www.transwilts.org.uk/whatis.html

Services are currently sparse - just 2 trains each way a day on the Chippenham to Trowbridge section - but requests for an improved service are making ever-better cases, helped by the rapid growth of the towns along the line, long journey times by road, and increasing travel flows between major centres in the new Wiltshire - Chippenham, Trowbridge, Salisbury, Melksham, Warminster and Westbury. We have moved from a national view in 2004 that 2 trains a day was enough to a view from Network Rail (in an otherwise conservative survey of the region) that an additional hourly service each way is cost-benefit justified.

In this new, positive environment a Community Rail Partnership will link YOU - members of the community (whether you're private individuals or speaking for an organisation) with the various elements of the rail industry and regulators / governors, with whom we are in touch. This will let us promote the existing service and stations, help to prepare the case for a more appropriate service, and make sure that service is used to its very best when it is achieved.

Community Rail Partnerships WORK. Organisers will be working alongside the Heart of Wessex, who have been a big success on the Weymouth to Bristol line, with ACoRP, the umbrella body that provides for the exchange of knowledge and ideas between partnerships, Wiltshire Council, the Department for Transport, First Great Western, and many more groups who are already assisting.

Contact Graham Ellis.

c/o 404, The Spa, Melksham, Wilts, SN12 6QL

http://www.savethetrain.org.uk http://www.transwilts.org.uk

+44 (0) 1225 708225 (phone) - email - info@transwilts.org.uk