THE number of train services being cancelled between Worcester and Hereford has fallen since the Malvern Gazette & Ledbury Reporter launched its 'Not Getting There' campaign in November.

At a public meeting organised by the Gazette & Reporter, Mike Haigh, the deputy managing director of Central Trains, said there had been an improvement in the service since November.

There were 34 trains terminated short of their destinations in the run up to the New Year, but only four in the last seven weeks.

Mr Haigh was speaking in front of 150 people at Wednesday's meeting at Malvern Girls' College.

"We do take these issues extremely seriously," he said.

"We have looked again at our operating protocol. We have given controllers new guidelines as to when they should and when they should not terminate trains short. There are still times where it's the right thing to do but they should not terminate trains unless it's absolutely necessary."

The turnaround time between services is being increased from about 15 minutes to 25 minutes at Great Malvern, to ensure that if there is a problem there is more time to fix it with less of an impact on the timetable.

Mr Haigh said Central had now secured 11 bus operators within 20km of Great Malvern to provide alternative transport if it is needed, meaning less waiting for stranded customers.

The firm is also looking at automatic customer information screens that would give faster updates about delays, rather than the manual pager-update systems currently used.

Answering a woman's concerns about overcrowding caused by school children on two-carriage trains, Mr Haigh said there were no Health and Safety Executive restrictions on the number of people in a train until it reached "crush standard".

He said trains longer than three carriages could not run on many services because trains with automatic doors cannot overrun platforms and several station platforms on the network, such as Bromsgrove, were only three carriage-lengths long.

While Central has plans waiting to extend many platforms, the Strategic Rail Authority has said the money is not available.

Several people backed the notion of a shuttle service that only ran between Worcester and Hereford. Mr Haigh said he would look into it, but was "not convinced that our customers would be prepared to trade the lack of through service (to Birmingham) for a marginal improvement in punctuality."