GAZETTE & HERALD: Corsham Station campaigners have acquired a new ally in their long-running battle to have the railway station re-opened.

At a meeting of the Corsham Local Transport Plan working group at Corsham Town Hall on Monday, the Ministry of Defence pledged support to the cause.

Two representatives from Basil Hill Barracks and the Joint Defence Communications Services Agency attended the meeting and voiced their support for the provision of a station.

North Wiltshire district councillor Peter Davis said that staff numbers at the communications services agency were due to go up to 3,000.

"Many will commute between Corsham and Abbeywood, which is the other side of Bristol," he said.

He said Abbeywood, which is the home of the Defence Procurement Agency, already had a new purpose built station and he expressed a wish to see a service running from Swindon right through to Abbeywood, passing through Corsham.

"Their support will definitely make a difference," said Coun Davis.

"Each piece of support from every organisation and body, from local government, commercial organisations and from members of the public, all give us more chance of getting a station.

"I think the three companies tendering for the franchise in the South West will be impressed by the amount of support there is and I am hoping they will include in their franchise tender a service from Swindon to Abbeywood."

Coun Davis has been lobbying the train operators tendering for the South West franchise, which are First Great Western, the National Express Group and Lang Rail.

Coun Roy Jackson, who also attended the meeting, was pleased the MoD had thrown its hat into the ring.

"There doesn't seem to be much hope of the station opening at the moment, but we have to keep on battling," he said.

"It's extremely important to the town with all the new housing being built."

Campaigners have had a rough ride in the long battle to get the station back in use. A planning application for the £2 million station was due to be submitted in summer 2002 and residents hoped as many as 50 trains a day would stop at the station, after its scheduled reopening in April 2003.

First Great Western's Bristol to Oxford service would run the trains and all the funding was put in place to get the station plans off the ground.

But the jubilation was short-lived. In January 2003 rail campaigners were left reeling at the news the station would not reopen after all because the Strategic Rail Authority announced it was cutting the service between Oxford and Bristol, to ease rail congestion.

The campaign to reopen the station has gone on for decades it began back in 1986 when it was launched by the Corsham Civic Society.

The station was originally closed in 1967 by Dr Beeching but a consultation on the Western Wiltshire Sustainable Transport Strategy 2000 revealed 97 per cent of Corsham residents were in favour of the station reopening.

The station would be situated to the south of Pound Mead with two platforms and a 120-capacity car park. Funding was offered by the SRA, local authorities and housing developers.