The RCTS: Then and now
IT WAS AN important day in Devon on November 20, 2021 when the long awaited reopening of the former London & South Western Railway route from Yeoford to Okehampton finally took place. A two-hourly interval service between the town and Exeter St David’s saw the town rejoin the national network after a gap of almost half a century. This, however, represents only the first stage of the many route miles that passed through sparsely populated areas of west Devon and north Cornwall, known as the Withered Arm. The LSWR main line from Exeter to Plymouth Friary had opened in 1876, but in 1895 a branch was opened from a remote spot high on Dartmoor west of Okehampton, known as Meldon Junction, running across Maddaford Moor to a station at Halwill Junction. Halwill is one of those fascinating railway locations, practically nonexistent previously but becoming of major importance in the network, eventually fostering a community in its own right. From here the line divided, with one branch running north-west into Cornwall and the seaside resort of Bude. The other headed due west over the county boundary through Camelford towards the important settlement of Wadebridge and on to the Atlantic Ocean resort of Padstow. Remarkably, Wadebridge had been host to a railway line since 1834 in the shape of the Bodmin and Wadebridge company – a locallyinspired, somewhat ramshackle, outfit that soldiered on unconnected to the rest of the country until 1895, even though it had been acquired by the LSWR in 1847, a purchase of dubious legality. The Great Western reached Bodmin in 1887, its branch from Bodmin Road (now Parkway) terminating at Bodmin General. When the LSWR finally opened from Halwill Junction, the B&W terminus became Bodmin North, the end of a branch from Wadebridge, and regular interchange services became the order of the day. A group of lines so far from Waterloo (and its intensive suburban network) inevitably became home to superannuated stock, with ‘Black Motor’ Class 700 0-6-0s and ‘Greyhound’ Class T9 4-4-0 locos surviving well into BR days. Most remarkable of all were the last three Class 0298 Beattie well tanks, which hauled short china clay trains along the freight-only Wenford Bridge branch until the early 1960s. For many years, the bulk of passenger traffic was handled by Maunsell Moguls, mainly of N Class. The publicity-conscious Southern Railway introduced the ‘Atlantic Coast Express’, serving a host of destinations and ultimately Bude and Padstow, bringing Bulleid Light Pacifics to the area after the Second World War. Summer Saturdays in the 1950s saw a host of additional trains for holidaymakers, but after all lines west of Salisbury were transferred to the Western Region of BR in 1963, through trains were soon phased out. As the pages of the Railway Observer recorded, decline quickly set in and closure west of Meldon Junction came in 1966, Okehampton following in 1972 until its recent revival.