Long wait for reopenings
Having read the article by Campaign for Better Transport Chief Executive Darren Shirley ( Analysis, RAIL 898), and then visiting the CBT website and reading its The case for expanding
the rail network report, I’m sceptical about the motivation and competence of some ‘experts’ claiming to want to improve our railway system.
For many years I lived in north Devon, first in Barnstaple and then Ilfracombe. An organisation called the Peninsula Rail Task Force claimed to want to improve the railways of Devon and Cornwall. In 2015, it issued a report for consideration by the Department for Transport, setting out its ideas of what is needed for the railways
in the West Country.
The term Filling the Gap was used, and the report included a map showing the huge gap between Barnstaple and Taunton left by the closure of the Devon & Somerset Railway in 1969.
But that wasn’t the gap they wanted filled. They wanted minutes shaved off the journey times between Penzance and Paddington - mere minutes off a journey that can take over six hours.
Having moved to the East Midlands two years ago, I checked to see if the line between Barnstaple and Exeter had at last had its Pacers replaced. I was delighted to see that they had, not by the promised two-car Class 158s but by the even better three-car ‘158s’ (similar to a Class 159), bringing the line’s rolling stock up to the standard of the main line Exeter-Waterloo service.
But while a welcome improvement in the number of passengers carried and their comfort, it makes little difference to the journey time on a slow single-track line with three passing loops protected by tokens that are exchanged by the driver leaving the train and visiting a hut on the platform.
Even the level crossing barriers at Eggesford are operated by the driver leaning out of the cab and pulling a wire. The line has to be closed in wet weather due to flooding and the risk of river bridges being washed away.
Mercifully, the rebuilding of Cowley Bridge Junction has prevented the line’s connection to the Great Western Main Line being severed each winter. But a journey as the crow flies of 40¼ miles between Barnstaple and Taunton still requires a rail journey of 66 miles via the south of the county before passengers can feel they are going somewhere. Because of Beeching’s closure, it can take up to half a day to get out of north Devon by train - much less by car or coach.
Annex 3 of the CBT report lists 33 ‘Priority 2 schemes’ (feasible projects) split into areas. The South West includes: Minehead-Taunton (the fully functioning West Somerset heritage railway); Barnstaple-Ilfracombe (which will need a major bridge to be built over the Taw and a swathe of demolition through Braunton, which has been built up since the railway closed); BarnstapleBraunton (part of the Ilfracombe line); and others of dubious value to the community. No mention of the Barnstaple-Taunton line.
No doubt others will be equally scathing about aspirations listed for their part of the country. I note there is no mention of the proposed extensions to Toton (connection with HS2) and Warsop-Edwinstowe-Ollerton from the Robin Hood Line, which appears likely to go ahead following campaigning by local MPs.
Sadly, until control of our railways is put in the hands of people who have no political axe to grind, have no hidden financial agenda, and are able to make decisions about the format of our railway system to benefit only the users, we will be arguing forever about what needs to be done.
And until the railways are run for the benefit of users rather than as money-making ventures, the financial investigations demanded by governments to justify reopening closed railways will prevent even the most needed reopenings from taking place without massive private investment.
Tony Olsson, Nottingham