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Next date for your diary 19th December 2024
19th - 18:00 for 18:30 at 48, Spa Road - see https://grahamellis.uk/blog1429.html
Report on meeting on 28th November 2024
Big Question - Should the Melksham Transport User Group roll in the another group such as the West Wiltshire Rail User Group?
Answer - Absolutely we are not going to. Melksham Transport User Group - the job continues
Reason - We have a separate job to do, representing the Melksham Area community, t o other groups around and we sit alongside them and we already work with them well. We fit like jig saw pieces with them.
The only reason in favour of winding up was a lack of key volunteers for the key roles. Previous Tr asurer, Secratary and Chair have done a fantastic job over many years, and huge thanks to them. You get to a point even if having achieved a lot that you step back; I have stepped across from Vice Chair to Chair but am looking for that to be to help with the restart until the next AGM.
Report on meetings of 25th October.
By email to all attendees as a note of how the meeting went
Thank you for coming along on Friday (that was 25th October) to the Melksham Transport User Group restart meetings. `I am including copies to those who sent their apologies but expressed an interest too - we are all busy people and a random date was bound to be inconvenient to some.
Over the three sessions, several dozen people came along. There was serious discussion about the future of the group, whether we need one at all these days, and how we might go about organising it practically.
Headlines ...
* Melksham Railway Development Group has achieved so much over the years that it has to some extent worked itself out of a role, and the old hands are largely no longer with us or active after several decades of largely successful voluntary work.
* YES, there is a need for a community group to support and promote public transport in the Melksham Area and there is no other existing group that is doing it.
* We have the encouragement of partners such as the TransWilts Community Rail Partnership, Melksham Without Parish Council, Melksham Town Council, and the Melksham Environment Group in going forward. And the approach is that we partner with all of those and with so many other parties involved.
* It's emphasised that we are a TRANSPORT group and not limited to any single mode.
* We meet again at 18:30 on 28th November (a month from today and a Thursday) to look at appointing officer roles and structure. Please tell others about it - we need a big, strong team of support everywhere from activists to "armchair" supporters.
* Melksham Environment Group meets this Wednesday. At least four committee members from there were at the various sessions on Friday, during which the thought of association to combine admin and work on mutual aims were discussed. MEG (for example) included the rail timetable on their summer lesflet.
In one of the sessions, the question was asked about GDPR and the interest being collected. The information you gave me is purely for use in the interim setup and restart / reform of the group and correspondence using it will be done via "bcc" - i.e. blind copies that do not reveal who's there. I will add an update at https://www.facebook.com/MelkshamTUG/ (a copy of this) that anyone can comment on and also onto the web site at https://www.mtug.org.uk and my personal details are at the base of this email and shareable. This is purely a setup while we work out how we're moving forward.
To note ...
https://www.mtug.org.uk
https://www.facebook.com/MelkshamTUG/
https://mtug.org.uk/lib/mtug25.pdf - slides projected on Friday
https://mtug.org.uk/lib/constbrtief.pdf - constituency brief to Brian Mathew
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).
A new approach