Hopes that the impending project to bring electric superfast trains to the West's main railway line will also be extended into the rest of the region, look likely to be dashed next week.
Campaigners and local MPs in railway towns on the West's 'other' mainline – which runs across the southern part of Wiltshire into Somerset – have been lobbying the Department of Transport to get the electrification project to include them.
The DfT has already announced a massive Great Western electrification plan to begin later this year to electrify the line from Paddington to Swindon, Chippenham, Bath, Bristol and on to South Wales.
That will mean much faster journey times to the capital, and the prospect of positive knock-on effects to the economies along the M4 corridor.
But MPs in Wiltshire and into Somerset want the line that serves them to be electrified too. It branches off at Reading and then serves Bedwyn station in Wiltshire, Westbury, Frome, Castle Cary and Taunton. The electrification plans only had the project reaching Newbury on that line. MPs in Somerset, and South West Wiltshire's Andrew Murrison had said their part of the world could be 'left behind' economically, if electrification isn't extended, and so ministers in Whitehall hired a team of consultants to look into the costs of extending the electrification and the economic benefits it would bring.
The report by Arup, the consultants given the task, is due to be published on June 7 but campaigners from each of the stations along the route were invited to meet the consultants at the end of their work.
It is understood that the consultants will be recommending that the project is extended into Wiltshire – but only as far as Bedwyn station, near Marlborough, and not to Westbury or into Somerset.
That could mean services from Paddington to Taunton or Exeter are electrified until Bedwyn and then continue on conventional power, or it could mean specific electric trains starting and ending at Bedwyn, which is a small village station serving east Wiltshire's commuters.
Arup is understood to have looked at four options, including extending electrification to Bedwyn, to Westbury and into Somerset or not at all. Bill Wells, from the Bedwyn Trains Passenger group, said he had pointed out to ministers and First Great Western that most of the trains from Paddington to Newbury already continue to Bedwyn and terminate there.
"It is planned to electrify as far as Newbury by 2016, but we would point out that most trains service Newbury at present actually terminate at Bedwyn," he said. "The electrification does state that wiring the line west of Newbury is likely to follow at a later date. We would welcome this, however, our main concern involves the level and type of service that Bedwyn and the other stations to the west of Newbury can expect from 2016."
