Wessex Branch

Area

Hampshire and the unitary authorities of Bournemouth Christchurch and Poole, Dorset, Isle of Wight, Portsmouth, Southampton, south Wiltshire, and also the south-west of West Sussex.
We have over one hundred Railfuture members across our area, and we represent hundreds more through their membership of rail user groups affiliated to Railfuture in our area.

Newsletters

Railfuture Wessex branch publishes its newsletter usually twice a year.
Click HERE for the latest and all previous editions (available to view, and to download in PDF format).

Wessex is on Twitter and Facebook

In addition to the national Railfuture Twitter feed @Railfuture, you can now follow the Branch on its own local Twitter feed @RailfutureWessex. Also the Branch has its own Facebook page.

Events

Click here for Railfuture and other regional and national events, also conferences and key campaign dates.
At the revived Rail User Group Awards presented in Bristol on Saturday 16 July 2022 campaigner Nick Farthing went home with a gold framed certificate.

See RUG Awards for full details.

Current campaigns

We've started 2021 by looking at the various challenges facing railways in the South and the opportunities for improving train frequencies, journey times and service reliability. Our observations and proposals are set out in a Briefing Paper on the subject, which you can read here.

Railfuture has been instrumental in the successful bid to the Restoring Your Railway Ideas Fund for the Waterside line from Southampton to Fawley. With money from the Ideas Fund, Hampshire County Council commissioned a Strategic Outline Business Case - this report concludes that the project to restore a passenger service should proceed to the next stage. We responded by sending a letter of support to the Council in August 2021. Appended to this letter was our 2-page list of helpful comments which we hope the Council will take on board during subsequent planning stages. You can read this Appendix here.

We have been campaigning for a new station to serve the new 6000-home Welborne Garden Village north of Fareham, with a campaign leaflet and updates in July 2018, February 2019, January 2020, January 2021, November 2021, and May 2022. On 28 November 2022 Fareham BC announced and SLC Rail confirmed that they had been appointed to produce a Strategic Outline Business Case for the new station to serve the new garden village. Not a direct Beeching reversal / re-opening from the closure in 1964 of Knowle Halt as the site will be different, but the new Welborne station might be regarded as a Beeching replacement in a fit-for-the-21st-Century location.

We are also promoting a programme of incremental Route Capacity Enhancements between Salisbury and Exeter to increase service frequency and its capacity as a diversionary alternative to the Great Western route.

Our other objectives are:

• Reintroduce suitable rolling stock to all main line routes
• Lengthen trains which suffer overcrowding
• Speed up services where practicable
• Upgrade service on Portsmouth-Cardiff route to frequent inter-city standard
• Oppose ticket office closures
• Faster trains on the Alton line
• Newer trains and half-hourly service on Island Line
• Support Community Rail Partnerships including increased frequency on 'Heart of Wessex' line
• Resolve the ticket gateline furore in Portsmouth

Annual General Meeting

Our 2021 AGM was held on 15th April via Zoom. You can read notes from the meeting here and the Branch Chair's Notes for the meeting here.

Wessex Branch Contacts

Mike Southgate, Branch Chair - mike.southgate at railfuture.org.uk
Tony Smale, Branch Secretary - wessex at railfuture.org.uk
Our committee (with co-opted members) consists of around 10 activists representing all parts of the Wessex area, some with special interests in passenger, freight, infrastructure, social media, etc.
We can put you in touch with a Branch committee member in your area - please ask.

Rail User Groups in the Wessex region

Rail user groups in the Wessex area are shown on Railfuture's Regional List of Rail User Groups.
Wessex Branch helped to get the Salisbury-Exeter Rail Users' Group (SERUG) started in 2015. See their presentation to the Devon Rail Forum in November 2022.

Dashboard of all Wessex branch documents

View / download any of the material in the full Wessex branch dashboard here.

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