for Melksham's public transport usersTrains to Swindon, Chippenham, Trowbridge, Westbury .......
and connections to over 2,500 stations in Great Britain | ![]() |
The Melksham Rail User Group became the station friends member of ACoRP and has evolved into a more general transport organisation Melksham Transport User Group (MTUG). MRUG/MTUG have met online (via Zoom) since the start of the pandemic.
We are now at the point where travel is possible ... safety has always been paramount, but with knowledge, facemasks (please!) and new cleaning regimes - and most services to/from Melksham have plenty of capacity for social distancing.
Some good has come from recent times. Online meetings, monthly newsletters, and developing relationships with partners should not be lost, as we have our work cut out moving forward to rebuild public transport use to, from and within Melksham both for our community and for the wider environment and climate too.
Our mission is to maintain and enhance facilities at Melksham station and to act as an independent voice of the station users. This is augmented now by similar objectives for Melksham bus services.
Melksham is served by up to 18 trains a day on the line from Swindon to Westbury via Chippenham and Trowbridge.
Melksham Railway Station was closed in “the Beeching Era” - 1966. It re-opened in 1985, with British Rail, local councils and passengers partnering to bring back at least a part of the facility that had been so missed in the area.
The Melksham Railway Development Group (MRDG) was a community group that has worked hard over the years to support the station, though sometimes when the service was so poor it looked like it was lost again, and indeed if it weren’t for MRDG, Melksham might not have a station or train service today. Seven years ago, MRDG working with the TransWilts Community Rail Partnership, persuaded Wiltshire Council to sponsor, the Department for Transport to fund and GWR to run a three year trial of addition trains, and they have been very successful – for the first time since its re-opening, Melksham now has sufficient trains for passenger numbers to have grown well, and although the group is still very much concerned with further development, it was renamed the Melksham Rail User Group (MRUG).
MRUG has since evolved to look at transport in the town more generally and has become the Melksham Transport User Group (MTUG) in 2021. MTUG runs on a small budget kindly funded by Melksham Town Council and Melksham Without Parish Councils, and our membership includes representatives of both organisations. Events such as the Santa trips are costed to break even - their main intent is to publicise and promote the station and trains that serve it; any profit made is ploughed back into group funds. All work done for "MTUG" by the members is on a voluntary basis, for which the group is grateful.
The Group is also a member of the TransWilts Community Rail Partnership, supporting the use and growth of local and regional passenger train services on the Swindon to Westbury line via Chippenham, Melksham and Trowbridge, with service on to Dilton Marsh, Warminster and Salisbury. The Group is also a 'friend' of the Community Rail Network (formerly known as The Association of Community Rail Partnerships -ACoRP).
MRUG has evolved to the Melksham TRANSPORT User Group (MTUG) - still very much your rail group but adding in bus and other sustainable transport to our portfolio
Train timetables - 12th December 2021 to 14th May 2022
Towards London
Towards the South Coast
News and Upcoming ....
Trains now (updated 12 Dec 21)
Newsletter 16.2.2022 ((here))
Next MTUG meeting - 9th March 2022.
Zoom link ((here))
Meeting Minutes from 10 November 2021 - ((here))
Car park - pay cash or phone in to RingGo 0203 046 0060 / location code 21575. ((details)) |
A new approach