A trail-blazing trial shuttle service linking the national rail network with West Somerset Railway - due to begin this month - still has no known starting date, timetable or details of prices, frustrated railway supporters claimed this week.

“For months we’ve been trying to find out what’s going on and we’ve hit an absolute wall of silence,” said Minehead Rail Link Group chairman Alex de Mendoza.

“We completely support the Taunton-Bishops Lydeard shuttle trials but there’s been a complete shut-down of information. How can we help promote it if we don’t even know when it’s starting?”

At a meeting of the group on Tuesday, members complained that inquiries, phone calls and emails to designated shuttle operator Great Western Railway had gone unanswered and staff had been unco-operative when asked for information.

As reported in the Free Press in April, the Exmoor Gateway project is planned to involve six months of weekend trials of a diesel shuttle operated by GWR between Taunton and the WSR Bishops Lydeard terminus, where passengers would then board trains to Minehead.

It would be the first time a national rail operator had run a scheduled passenger service on a heritage line and was hailed as a possible forerunner of a Taunton-Minehead commuter link.

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