Public Transport in Melksham 20 years ago

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Public transport timetables
for Melksham - September 2000

Wiltshire County Council (in the days it was Wiltshire County Council) used to publish public transport timetables that included all operators with services in a particular area. The leaflet for the Melksham area - leaflet C32 from 4th September 2000 - is reproduced below. In those days there were severn road operators and one rail operator. That didn't change very much up until last month (March 2020) - at the start of that nonth there were still five road operators, but that has dropped now to just two. Services that were infreqent tend to have been lost, but services that had a reasonable daytime frequency have done rather better and grew until the current - and we hope - temporary pandemic restrictions where for our own good we are not travelling.

Looking at the 2000 timetable, as it is today, Melksham was at the crossover point of the Bath to Devizes services (then known as X71 to X73) and the Chippenham to Trowbridge and Frome service (234 and X234). Service 237 ran hourly from Trowbridge via Holt to Melksham, with alternate journeys continuing to Corsham via Lacock and to Calne as the 238. There was a town bus - route 34, and also routes 37, 72, 79, X76, X85, 86, X86 and 235 which ran to lesser frequencies. The National Express coach - daily to London, route 402 - ran recognisably in a similar way that it did until last month. Perhaps the biggest change we've seen is in Melksham's train service - on the back cover of the timetable, comprising just one train each way per day, Monday to Friday only.








































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About the Melksham Tranport User Group

Formerly the Melksham Rail User Group. Prior to that Melksham Rail Development Group Founded 1995

Trains
Heading towards London until June 2024
Heading towards Southampton until June 2024
 
Rail User Group (West Wilts)
Online Forum (Great Western Coffee Shop)

Buses
Times - between towns
Times - town bus
Bus User Group (Option 24/7)

The Melksham [Rail / Transport] User Group and its predecessors have partnered with the train operators over the years to promote growth of services and their use. However, we are embarrassed to promote the current service with its awful reliability record. For regular users who are robust to the issues it is still useful - for newcomers there's a significant risk of their first planned use going wrong, quite apart from the worry beforehand of not knowing if it will run.

Four officers of the group met in December 2022, and we have decided on a hiatus until the spring. We'll maintain insurance and CRN membership; our annual Zoom account runs until mid-year and we will occasionally feed online media and deal with correspondence from it. In the meantime, we also recommend you to the groups linked above.

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