Transport group takes steps in railway station revival project

A transport group in Melksham has applied for grant funding to reopen the railway station’s cafe and information point.

Melksham Transport User Group (MTUG) has applied for £3,500 from GWR’s Customer and Community Infrastructure Fund to support the project.

The group hopes to reopen the facilities two years after the former cafe, Melksham Hub Cafe, closed in 2023 due to rising costs and low footfall.

Chair of MTUG Graham Ellis said discussions with Wiltshire Council have been ongoing since the closure.

“I have been in touch with Wiltshire Council since that point. Opening [the facilities] immediately after Covid was not clever but also a lot of lessons have been learnt from that; this is something very different. The main drift is to help people use public transport,” he said.

“Melksham Station is a key transport node already and also for the future as the town grows. But it’s unstaffed, unfriendly, lacking warmth and a loo and off-putting to newcomers.

“Information at the station addresses these issues and in doing so also provides a community and social meeting point for volunteers, especially advocates of public transport who welcome the interaction.”

Melksham Hub Cafe first opened at the station in 2021 as part of the TransWilts project, which aimed to improve the station and create a welcoming gateway into the town.

“The new space would be somewhere warm, there would be a toilet in there, coffee and packaged snacks and nothing that would need food licences,” said Graham. “There would be WiFi there and it would probably be run by some of the MTUG committee.”

Graham said reopening the cafe and information point would benefit the wider community.

“The overall big strategy is to improve Melksham for everybody who lives here. It’s bigger than just the station,” he explained.

Graham recently attended a meeting of Melksham Without Parish Council to seek the parish council’s support for the project.