Twyford

Following our vigorous campaign against the Twyford cuts proposed in the draft December Timetable I was pleased to see that this week First Great Western have announced a number of proposed improvements. In particular they now plan to add an additional fast train, calling at Twyford shortly after 07:00 and then stopping only at Maidenhead before arriving into London at around 07:30. This change has yet to be confirmed by Network Rail.

In addition to this there is good news for residents in Wargrave and Shiplake who had faced a drastic cut in service; following the strong representations from local people FGW have relented and agreed that all trains will stop at both these stations.

Both of these changes are extremely welcome and go to show that our campaign has been effective.

However, even with these changes the December 2006 timetable provides a demonstrably inferior Twyford service to that provided at the moment. The current service is significantly worse than that we received just two years ago and I therefore am determined to ensure that we receive improvements over and above the current service!

I am pleased that FGW do appear to be listening hard to local feedback and seem willing to amend their timetable where possible. Alison Forster has said that further announcements will be made over the coming couple of weeks and I intend to step up our campaign for better rail services.

If you have not already signed the on-line petition at www.saveourtrains.com please do consider doing so and encourage anyone you know who hasn't yet signed to do so. Next week I shall be presenting the final signatures to the Department of Transport, so if you could sign it before then that would be ideal.

Thanks once again for your support for this campaign. It is refreshing to receive good Twyford news on this issue; but I am determined that they don't think this is enough and will continue to try to ensure that further improvements are forthcoming!

Theresa May