Dartmoor line to Okehampton

After all the fuss about the north getting 100 billion down in the west we are a little neglected. However quietly thy have been working on 20 miles of line that was actually runnable just not shiny new from Exeter to Okehampton.

There was a test run on Wednesday
then the new full service

So I could have come to London today by train most of the way but my schedule meant I needed to drive up last night. Probably can't afford the ticket either.

As a child, maybe about 1960, I remember meeting my father at that station on a steam train, but it came in on the other platform. Funny how one remembers such moments. Also having travelled from there up to Paddington walking past the hissing steamengine sadly with no appreciation then of my future interest in such things.

Living in Ireland now, but used to live in Exeter, and have fond memories of happy hours watching GWR and Southern steam at Exeter St Davids. Hightlights of the day were things like the down Cornish Riviera Express, with a King on the front, coming through the centre road at speed non stop, and the regular bankers that were essential to get the Southern trains up to Central. Even a relatively light passenger train got help, and the other highlight was the daily ballast train from Meldon, there was a specific banker engine fleet, the Z class, and for the ballast, they'd send 3 down, put 2 on the back, and a third Z on the front to help the engine that had brought the train in from Meldon, usually a Lord Nelson class. Once they were all set up, it was then a case of a time delay to let everyone get their safety's lifting, then a cacophony of whistles as the front got the all clear, and sounded off to let the rest know it was time to go, followed by the responses from the 2 on back, and then the fun started, especially on a wet day, they needed the power of all 4 engines to get up that slope.

Another bit of "fun" was getting to know some of the drivers of the 14xx class that were used on the Exe Valley line, and then being able to grab a ride from the southern end of Platform 5 out to beyond the cross overs, and back onto the bay platform 1 to couple up to the trailer coaches that were still in use on that line.

I was still young enough to get child rate rover tickets, and in those days, it was possible to go as far as Lyme Regis in the east, and down to Plymouth on both the GWR and Southern, and up the Exe valley to Dulverton, and all of them were still steam, though it wasn't long before the GWR became diesel multiples, and most of the Southern branch lines were killed off, There were other places on that rover, but the "nice" runs were the branch lines. I can't remember every going up to Hemyock from Tiverton Junction, I think the passenger service had finished when I was roving.

The return of the Okehampton section will be very much welcomed by the people of North Devon, and maybe, with luck, the hoped for plan to reopen through to Plymouth will become a reality, and make it possible to have an alternative to the South Devon coast section, which is still very vulnerable to sea erosion, despite massive expenditure in recent years.

Did Beeching get it right? In some respects maybe, but the solution would have been less painful if the move to diesel and electric services had happened sooner, we all know that the running costs of steam were massive, and the parcel systems of the day meant long lay over times in each station, which is now very much not the case.

As to what may get put back again in some form as a result of the changes to reduce carbon footprint, who knows? It may well be the case that some routes could be rebuilt, at least partially, and if a way to mix rail and road to handle some types of freight were to happen, the reduction in carbon footprint could be massive, I for one would be very happy to see a massive reduction in the number of HGV's on the roads, and with some sensible choices, that should be possible.

As for what will happen to steam, I suspect that's going to be a very interesing fight, the heritage railway routes will fight long and hard to retain their locomotives, and even the old diesels are going to be looked at very seriously, given their ability to spew massive clouds of exhaust smoke, some of them could be mistaken for steam given the clouds they emit,especially when cold.

I doubt I'll see the end of those fights, it will probably rumble on for 20 or 30 years, and even then there will be plenty of people who will not want the history of the country to be destroyed to the degree that the greens will be happy with, and at over 70 now, I suspect it will become an issue of considerable indifference for me over the next decade, as long as I can still get some sort of suitable fuel to run the O gauge steamers that I have.

Rather amusing the statement that it takes four hours Plymouth to London and we're expected to pay Billions to get to London ten to fifteen minutes earlier from Leeds. Light travels at 186000 miles a SECOND and so does Zoom Facetime Skype etc.

It's said history repeats itself, those making the most out of the HS2 fiasco will be today's rail barons.

Regards Ian.

If the same criteria , as were applied by Beeching , were applied to most connections outside of city to city , I doubt if we would have any railways left.

The cost of using the train for normal travel is just prohibitive.

Strange how other countries manage to subsidise their transport systems. Hungary for example manage to keep fares low. Haven't visited for a couple of years but at present a weekly travel pass (hetijegyet) in Budapest will cost about £11.20, this allows unlimited travel on trains, buses, trams and metro. Would be nice to get something for London at the same sort of price. Currently just a zone1 (underground) weekly travel card is £37 (no buses, no trams, no mainline).

John

I never went on the Oakhampton route but I do remember train spotting at Exeter Central and St. Davids in the late 1950s. The staff at St. Davids were not friendly so we bought tickets for Exeter Central. There were very few trains that stopped at both stations so we had quite a bit of time. I think the SR London trains picked up bankers away from the actual St. Davids station.

Beeching was just the fall guy. His boss was the Minister of Transport, Ernest Marples, who had been managing director on Marples Ridgway. Marples Ridgeway just happened to be the main contractor for most, if not all, the motorway building. I am sure that there was not a conflict of interests since he had transfered all his shares in the company to his wife [ref. Wikipedia].

JA

Hi Peter, nice picture, I see the loco is on static display at the moment, at Didcot Railway Centre and awaiting an overhaul.

Regards Nick.

Edited By Nicholas Farr on 23/11/2021 17:16:28

Oh yes, everyone blames Dr. Richard Beeching but he was only doing as he was told.

One subsequent government commissioned a review whose name (author) I forget, that made Beeching look more builder than destroyer. Of two of its proposal maps, one would have chopped all the interconnecting routes, apparently randomly, into simple branch-lines of unlikely future. The other proposed merely a few trunk lines between London and the other main cities. The report was quietly shelved.

That line in Devon though.... According to my road atlas it already existed before all the ballyhoo, all the way from Crediton via Colebrooke junction to Okehampton, labelled the "Dartmoor Railway". So is this a preserved line taken back into Network Rail? Or a mineral line?

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A lot of former routes cannot be re-built because British Railways as was - or contemporary Government - sold key areas of land for re-development to prevent re-instatement.

My local example was the Weymouth - Portland branch, closed in the early-1950s to passengers, and altogether in the 1960s. For some years afterwards the local paper (Dorset Echo) carried even councillors' appeals for its rebuilding, based on most of the formation still intact, but showing only the writers' basic ignorance of local geography let alone railways!

Even odder...

Around the 1990s or 2000s a dream-machine called 'Jurassic Coast Railways' proposed to build a narrow gauge line from Bridport in West Dorset; north to Crewkerne ( on the Exeter-London Waterloo line), and east to Portland. Both were brand-new cuts through hilly countryside, apart from the last mile to Portland. There, a dual narrow/standard gauge line would replace the lost branch to Weymouth; to link the national system once again to Portland Harbour; ex-Royal Navy, now commercial 'Portland Port'.

Crewkerne " .... where connections ... to the new inter-European services etc. " So the present web-site says. West Bay to Prague off-peak return, please.

Three Bridport businessmen originated this fully-commercial enterprise. The MD, a PPE manufacturer claiming an impressive railway and locomotive preservation CV, plus a computer consultant and a former Ffestiniog Railway manager.

They started simply with a two-mile narrow-gauge tourist line rejoining Bridport to its harbour at West Bay... Broadchurch for the telly addicts. Redevelopment on the former branch from Maiden Newton (Weymouth - Bristol) forced JCR to use a flood-plain and an existing bridge under Bridport Bypass, with very limited headroom even for two-foot gauge.

The original web-site glowed with costs estimates down to fencing-staples, paintings of shiny new steam-locos, and an impressively unlikely "expressed interest" list.

Who would have paid for the full, far more ambitious scheme? The present, re-designed, "Jurassic Coast Railways" web-site hopes the National Lottery players and the EU's tax-payers, that's who.

I have this second web-site open now alongside this forum. Last-up-dated c.2010, it shows the MD's c.v. and an artists' impression of a single Diesel rail-car, reveals fewer "interested"; justifies by mere quotes from woolly, official discussion-documents about transport and tourism; and names Departments who "wish you luck" but don't promise help!

Of even the Bridport - West Bay first-phase, not a single sod was spaded, staple stapled or sleeper slept.

Enthusiasm, eh?

Pretty much most of the Southern region trains stopped at both St Davids and Central by the early 60's, the bankers were added from a small holding siding at the northern end of Platform 3, or if one was needed on the front, they were held in a small spur siding just up the slope from the old signal box. Quite a few of the up trains were merged into one longer train at Central, they've all been ripped out now, but there used to be through roads in the middle, with cross over points that allowed a train to come up from St Davids and then get into the front end of the platform at Central, past a train that was at the back of the platform, and there was another pair of points that allowed the engine from the front of the second (back) train to get out of the middle so that the front train could set back and couple up to the rear coaches.

Back in those days, it was cheaper to get a single ticket from St Davids to St Thomas than getting a platform ticket, and for me, that worked well, as I could come out of St Thomas and get a bus home with no hassles. and because of the way the bus routes were structured, it was quicker to get home from St Thomas that it was to go by bus from St Davids.

It used to work well, the Golden Hind (the evening fast train from Paddington) used to come in on Platform 2 at 8 pm, ( 2 and a half hours from Paddington), and then there would be a down stopper from Platform 6 just after the Hind had gone, so that was ideal for me. In the latter days, the Hind had a Western Diesel on it, and they were noted for very rapid exits, especially if they were running late, accompanied by a big cloud of smoke as the driver wound it up to a very high setting before they were even across the platform exit pointwork.

It's all changed now, the through road between platforms 2 and 3 has gone, 2 and 3 are now used primarily for Southern region services to and from Central, and then 4 and 5 are the main platforms for Taunton and Plymouth direction services, 6 is then used for services that either start or finish at Exeter, with occasional services to the Taunton and North Devon direction starting from the short Bay platform 1 that used to be used for the Exe Valley services.

In the 60's platform 2 was the main Down platform for Plymouth direction, 3 was the Up southern, and 4 was the down Southern, but that meant a lot more conflicts between the Down GWR and the southern services, which is no longer the case with the new layout, and for now, most London Southern services terminate at St Davids, there are local services from Exmouth to Barnstaple and Paignton, but there's not the significant numbers of Southern heading out to Crediton and beyond as was the case before all the branch lines closed, some of the Waterloo services came into Central as 12 coaches, and then went on beyond Exeter as 4 3 coach trains to Barnstaple/Bideford, as well as other branches in North Cornwall, and Plymouth. .

The hill up to Central is now signalled for 2 way working on both tracks, partly to ease the transition of services that come from the Plymouth direction and then go up to Central, which is a more recent development that didn;'t happen in the 60's, but happens a lot more as a result of track maintenance work or flooding problems at Cowley Bridge

They were very different days.

Yes, I thought it was a propos of the early posts in this thread.

It's a Philip D Hawkins painting from his book "Tracks On Canvas" ... a wonderful book that I would think would suit many here (plus his other books).

Engineers tend to focus on the technology without considering what makes a railway profitable - or not! Pretty dangerous, because very often technology is only a secondary issue. Size doesn't matter, it's what you do with it!

British railways were pioneers. They were built by private enterprise seeking profit, often resulting in poorly routed lines in competition with each other. Not designed as a network, and - because it wasn't managed as a network in Beeching's time - the accounts didn't clearly show which combinations were paying, and which were beyond hope.

Despite Grouping and Nationalisation, Beeching faced an unholy mess! For example, rather than take an ice-cold decision to centralise engineering, Swindon, Doncaster, Derby, Glasgow and other centres were subjected to death by a thousand cuts. Nothing wrong with any of them, but they should have been replaced in 1948 with one really good one, thoroughly modernised and forward looking. Politicians find it hard to take these difficult decisions because it means putting good people out of work and it's almost impossible to do it fairly.

Beeching was called in as the railways approached financial breaking point. Although the system provided a remarkably good service, it was unaffordable. Competition from road transport, and the shift away from coal and heavy engineering was eating profits and there was an urgent need to replace large quantities of time expired infrastructure and rolling stock. Worn rails, rotting sleepers, ancient signalling equipment, iffy bridges, tunnels and drains, excessively narrow running gauge (sharp curves, platforms too close, headroom under bridges etc), high-maintenance steam engines, Victorian urinals, decrepit stations, obsolete carriages and wagons, etc etc etc. The consequences of years of kicking the can down the road rather than taking difficult decisions.

In principle, Beeching's Cuts were essential. Unfortunately later analysis showed his team hadn't had time to analyse the accounts properly and this led to a series of bad mistakes. Closing lines to places about to be developed as new-towns. Much closing of branch lines that made main-lines profitable. Not thinking strategically about futures. Spending big money on keeping moribund lines open, and unwisely trying to save money by extending the life of incompatible rolling stock and other end-of-life junk. The devil was in the detail.

Two bad errors in my opinion:

• allowing the railways to get into a serious financial mess in the first place rather than biting the bullet early; and
• applying an axe to the system rather than a scalpel.

Beeching shouldn't have been necessary, and he should have spent much more time collecting and understanding the data. But he was a victim of previous politics and commercial mismanagement.

Interesting to compare UK experience with how railways deployed in Europe. The UK created hundreds of railway companies and competing lines - laissez faire. The continentals learned much from the resulting pain (see Railway Mania) and put considerable effort into planning railways as national resources. In consequence they wasted less money building and maintaining unprofitable systems, and suffered fewer painful cuts when marginal branch lines went out of business. And of course continental railways were so badly damaged after WW2 they had to be rebuilt, a glorious opportunity to modernise! UK railways were worn out rather than wrecked, and the system went into patch and mend mode. Not smart in the long term!

Dave

Many of the lines were funded by house building. Buy the land build the railways and the houses, Sell the houses because of the new transport link to the big city and recoup the money. Sounds like a plan for today with the need for housing and transport connections.

The real economics of rail is what it does to the economy of the places it connects.

regards Martin

Dave

You are right. Breeching never analysed what the railways did. I guess he was not allowed to (I believe the closures were based on the revenue from each station/line for one day in February).

The railways always had a problem with timetabling frieght and passenger services together. The post Great War solution was to use dedicated frieght and passenger routes. Although routes like the Great Central and the Settle to Carlisle had passenger services they were generally slow so they did not hinder the frieght services. This continued into the days of BR.

With poor passenger services and frieght moving to road these routes were badly hit and most were axed quite early. It is these routes that are needed now since heavy frieght is returning. This puts government in a predicament. It is easier to say one is investing in sexy new high speed track to run very fast trains and use existing track for frieght and local trains than to built new frieght lines. Then the money is pull and everything remains a mess (like the line from Paddington to Bristol - the electrification will never be finished).

Rant over.

JA

Since we've drifted into Exeter... As you take your train out of Exeter Central towards Honiton keep an eye out on the left just after Morrisons (built over many acres of sidings) for another new line under construction. Dual gauge too. That is 5in and 7 1/4in of the Exeter and District Model Engineers. The 'District' bit reaches Okehampton, Crediton, & Exmouth.