Melksham railway station

Melksham Add→{{rail-interchange}}
General information
Location	County of Wiltshire
Managed by	Great Western Railway
Platforms	1
Other information
Station code	MKM
History
Original company	Wilts, Somerset and Weymouth Railway
Pre-grouping	Great Western Railway
Post-grouping	Great Western Railway
Key dates
05 September 1848	Opened
1966	Closed
1985	Reopened

Melksham railway station is a railway station serving the town of Melksham in Wiltshire, England. It is on the branch line from Chippenham to Trowbridge that was originally part of the Wilts, Somerset and Weymouth Railway, absorbed in 1850 by the Great Western Railway.

The station opened with the original section of the line between Thingley Junction and Westbury, on 5 September 1848. British Railways closed the station from 18 April 1966 but reopened it to passengers from May 13th 1985. The station had a siding which gave access to the former Wiltshire United Dairies/United Dairies creamery, last owned by Co-operative Wholesale Society Dairies, allowing access for milk trains. After its closure the dairy was converted into an industrial estate. From the 1960s to the mid 1980s there was a rail served Shell oil depot at Melksham run first by Jack Dean (oils) and later by Hartwells Oils. This received heating oil from a refinery at Llandarcy in west Wales but closed around 1983. During the 1970s Foster Yeoman operated a Roadstone terminal in the former goods yard which was rail served from Merehead Quarry. The Wiltshire Farmers Ltd also had a private siding south of the station, this was in use until c1989 for occasional deliveries of bagged fertiliser but was removed in 1990.

Service

The Melksham train

As of June 2009, Melksham station was served by two trains a day between Swindon and Westbury, operated by Great Western Railway, compared with five each way per day before the December 2006 timetable change. The Save The Melksham Train group campaign for improvements to the services on the line.

As noted above there were formerly two departures each way on weekdays and Saturdays from the station, but the Saturday service pattern was quite different from that during the week. There was also a single train each way on Sundays.

From the start of the December 2013 winter timetable, Melksham has a significantly improved service. Trains now run approximately every two hours each way Mon-Sat (with peak period extras - eight departures in total) and five trains each way on Sundays. Two weekday southbound services run through to Southampton Central.

The Melksham single line serves as a very useful diversionary route when either the Paddington-Westbury-Taunton or Taunton-Bristol Temple Meads-Bath routes are closed for engineering work or otherwise disrupted, occasional use is also made of the line by Freightliner trains running between Southampton and the Midlands when their normal route via Basingstoke and Reading is unavailable. GWR's hourly Portsmouth Harbour-Cardiff Central services are sometimes diverted via Melksham to terminate and start at Swindon rather than Cardiff when engineering work is taking place between Bath, Bristol and the Severn Tunnel in connection with the electrification of the Great Western main line. The downside of these diversions is that the local Westbury-Swindon 'Trans Wilts' service often has to be covered by a Rail Replacement bus service as there are insufficient paths available over the 8 mile single line section due to a lack of intermediate signal sections. A number of Mendip Rail aggregate trains from the quarries at Merehead and Whatley also use the line serving destinations such as Appleford, Oxford Banbury Road, Wootton Bassett and Acton (London). A train of empty ballast hoppers operated by GB Railfreight runs most weekdays from Westbury via Melksham to Cliffe Hill Stud Farm in Leicestershire.

Trains longer than one carriage cannot open all doors as the platform cannot accommodate them.

From summer 2015 a ticket vending machine has been in use on the platform enabling passengers to either purchase their tickets or collect pre-paid tickets for their journey. An additional 20 free car parking spaces were provided at the same time also covered cycle accommodation, CCTV and a new passenger shelter.

Preceding station	National Rail			Following station
Chippenham		Great Western Railway Wessex Main Line		Trowbridge

Save The Train

The 'Save The Train' group was launched in 2005, to try and raise awareness that the services along the TransWilts Line were being cut down, as stated above to two trains per day (each way) only. They were concerned from the lack of train services linking local Wiltshire towns/city together. These are - Swindon, Chippenham, Melksham, Trowbridge, Westbury and some services through to Southampton Central. Prior to the introduction of extra services in late 2013, 'Save the Train' members transferred to the community element of the TransWilts Community Rail Partnership.

External links

• Campaign to save Melksham's train service