Planned Timetable

GO-OP’s ambition is to commence passenger services in Summer 2022, with passenger routes planned between Bishops Lydeard (a station on the independent West Somerset Railway, not currently served by the main or connecting lines) and Swindon, via poorly served locations in Somerset and Wiltshire.

The volume of services on this route will initially be:

  • Monday – Saturday: 3 return trips Taunton-Swindon, 3 return trips Taunton – Westbury, 5 return trips Taunton-Bishops Lydeard
  • Sunday: 3 return trips Taunton-Swindon, 3 return trips Bishops Lydeard - Taunton

Click here to see the full Timetable

Some of the main benefits are:

  • Starting the route at Bishops Lydeard, a station not connected to the mainline, opens a new area of potential passengers. Ideal for those commuting into Taunton or wanting to avoid town center traffic to catch a mainline train, and for visitors to the West Somerset Railway.
  • The route from Taunton to Swindon could be one of the main rail corridors for the west; at present the poor services and connnections mean that there is only one viable trip southbound on this route but GO-OP’s services increase that to six (there is an hourly route with a change at Bristol that is faster, but Taunton and Swindon are the only stops in Somerset and Wiltshire that it calls at – there are seven other stations between those two, and GO-OP will call at all of them).
  • Between Swindon and Yeovil there is presently only one northbound trip per day with less than 30 minutes waiting for connections; GO-OP’s timetable makes it five.
  • Improvements for journeys across Wiltshire: such as the TransWilts route from Swindon to Salisbury via Melksham and Westbury. There are presently only four viable journeys (less than half an hour waiting for a connection) southbound on a weekday, and seven northbound; adding our routes makes it six and nine respectively making it much more practical.
  • An increase in the volume of services at significant towns such as Frome (up by a quarter) and Melksham (up by a third); all of which will enable interchange at Westbury for a wide variety of destinations.
  • Changes at Castle Cary allow travel between Taunton and Yeovil (and often, Dorchester) at six times each day both ways – rather than only four at present.
  • The proposal for a station re-opening at Langport & Somerton will be greatly strengthened by GO-OP’s commitment that if it opens, all GO-OP’s services will stop there.

GO-OP’s plan is to begin with a modest operation of just two train sets in operation at the same time so as to test systems and trains with minimal impact on the wider network. This means that the timetable must necessarily rely heavily on interchange with other operators services, and our timetable will consist of a few long distance movements combined with a number of short distance shuttles.

GO-OP now have run times for the sections of the route calculated precisely and to the standards of the network code, and a path analysis that confirms our timetable to Westbury and Swindon is compliant with other operators needs.