Yesterday - 2nd September 2025 - saw the very first call for passengers at Melksham station of one of Great Western Railway's IETs (Intercity Express Trains). And what a fitting date as it was on 2nd September 1848 that that railway first came to Melksham.

Melksham Station lies on a now-single line between Chippenham and Trowbridge with a local shuttle train running up to 9 times a day from Swindon via Chippenham and Melksham to Trowbridge and Westbury.  But on occasions that the main line from London to the West Country via Pewsey is not available, long distance expresses are diverted via Melksham and our local service is culled.

GWR's IETs were introduced in 2017, and took over all long distance trains. They could not stop at Melksham though, because our station (like many other wayside stations) was not programmed into their train database, and the station was not equipped to receive them.  However, recent changes encouraged by the Melksham Transport User Group, and other community groups, and being common sense too, have added them to the database and signage has been added so that they can stop at Melksham.

The very first such stop was yesterday - when the 15:42 Exeter to London (Paddington) train, diverted "our way", called at Melksham at just after half past five. The first of what I hope will be a routine, but infrequent, event.  When our local train is displaced by the medium distance expresses that come up from Paignton and Exeter, serving Castle Cary and Westbury, we can now look forward to them calling at Melksham to give us an alternative service.  Yesterday's diversion was made at very short notice indeed (less than an hour) and only half a dozen people got off the train at Melksham, but future diversions of some of these semi-fast services are also authorised to call at Trowbridge and Chippenham. With better notice as will usually be the case when engineering works are planned, they will be an excellent step forward in providing a continuing service at Melksham. Our passenger journey numbers have risen from 3,000 to 63,000 per annum since a useful service was restored and should head for over 250,000 in future years when proposals to increase the regular service to at least hourly come to fruition.









For the record - train 802013 - a five carriage train - on service 1A89

 
And as shown on the last image a second IET called just over an hour later, followed by a third shortly after 7pm.  All heading towards Swindon.  One also called at Chippenham. More details on the main TW disruption thread. 

 

Sometimes (and this was one) the line from Westbury to Reading is closed in one direction only, so the trains running through Melksham were lopsided.   There are a number of learning points from yesterday - seeing how it worked first time and I'm delighted that they are being fed back too.   You may have noted on Facebook that other experienced and comments far wider than just mine are there.

For completeness of story here in public, I would like to clarify one issue.   As authorised and set up, extra calls between Westbury and Reading (at Melksham, and also at Chippenham and Trowbridge) are to be made on the semi-fast services that already call at Castle Cary and Westbury. The Penzance express services will NOT usually call; rather than(as indeed we saw yesterday) they will still run through on diversion without stopping.  I noted on social media a complaint about the Plymouth to London train taking 3 hours and 44 minutes for the journey, and asking "is it any wonder it took so long with stops at places like Melksham".  The Plymouth to London train was diverted via Melksham but did not stop. The extra time it took above the "holy grail" three hours was because the normal route was not available, and the social media poster should be grateful that the diversionary route is available at all!

 
There was certainly some congestion around Thingley yesterday evening.   The Gloucester to Salisbury service waited a good 15 minutes for the diverted service from Plymouth to come off the single line.   A Bristol service, which was also late anyway was trapped behind it for a further ten minutes.    A freight also got caught slightly. 

In the overall scheme I think it is a price worth paying given the circumstances but long distance travellers may not agree and may indeed not been told the full story.