OPEN ACCESS
RAIL readers have their say on: South West reopenings Rail resilience HS2 trains Welsh rolling stock Ticketing Manchester Victoria Train preservation
I was pleased to read of the very positive report by Greengauge 21, backing reopening the route between Exeter and Plymouth via Okehampton and Tavistock ( RAIL 820).
We are going to have to face facts. It will almost certainly be physically and economically impossible to sufficiently protect the present route via Dawlish, so that it can provide a 24/365 all-weather link. Even on the day I read your magazine, some Dawlish route services had to be suspended due to the weather.
However much finance is invested in protecting this vital line, there is always the risk that an exceptional ‘storm of the century’ (which we already seem to experience every few years) is going to render the alignment unusable for days, weeks or even months.
In contrast, on the Okehampton route, the Victorians have bequeathed us an extremely well-engineered alignment that can be brought back into use relatively easily. It has the potential for reasonably fast running, it serves Crediton, Okehampton and Tavistock, and it is most unlikely to be closed by weather (other than extreme winter snow).
Although the area to the west of the route is mainly sparsely populated, it does still contain Launceston and Bude. Communications in the whole of west Devon and north Cornwall could therefore be appreciably enhanced by the provision of railheads at Tavistock and Okehampton.
The route would also be useful for future freight, given the now-significant use of the South Devon route by fast and stopping passenger services.
The recent reopening of the Waverley route in Scotland has shown how demand for reinstated rail services can be very significantly underestimated by conventional and sometimes over-cautious forecasting methodology.
The key to making a case for reopening the Exeter-Plymouth via Okehampton line may therefore lie in taking a more intuitive approach to assessing demand, coupled with quantifying important wider economic benefits to the sub-region, and utilising a very competitive approach to bidding for reconstruction.