SW railway network connectivity a disgrace
I AM responding to your article dated February 5th, regarding rail defences at Dawlish. It is outrageous the way this government treats the South West, and in particular, our rail network connectivity.
It has taken seven long years for this government and Network Rail to facilitate a solution that a child could come up with, and that’s to build a bigger wall?! The ex Transport
Minister, Chris Grayling, listened to a barmy ‘solution’ from Network Rail, which involved moving the Dawlish/ Teignmouth coastal rail line further down the beach!
Torbay, Totnes, Ivybridge, Plymouth and the whole county of Cornwall have a single railway link, and were all completely cut off in 2014, when the sea wall was breached.
Whilst I welcome the reopening of part of the Northern Dartmoor route, between Exeter and Okehampton, this will create two ‘branch’ lines (Exeter to Okehampton and Plymouth to Gunnislake – and the Bere Alston to Tavistock reinstatement has still not materialised!) and these two branch lines will not provide the plethora of destination options that the complete, bi-directional reopening of the Northern Dartmoor route would provide.
There has to be a secondary rail link west of Exeter, and the reinstatement of the Northern Dartmoor route – ex-Southern main line – would provide this, as well as bringing swathes of the Westcountry closer to a rail link once again.
Network Rail even said themselves that reopening the Northern Dartmoor line was the best solution.
Reopening the ‘missing link’ between Meldon and Bere Alston would provide the following:
1) Provide a service again, in its own right, to both Okehampton and Tavistock, and reconnect them to the rest of the UK rail network.
2) Provide a vital ‘back-up’ route for the inevitability of the Dawlish/ Teignmouth coastal route being hit by storms, and the cessation and disruption of services.
3) Relieve the enormous pressure on the road from Tavistock to Plymouth.
4) Bring locations such as Holsworthy, Bude, Hatherleigh and Launceston within reach of a possible ‘Parkway’ style station near Okehampton (ideally near Sourton Cross, close to the A30).
5) Enhance tourism and business to North Dartmoor and North Cornwall.
The Plymouth to Exeter route, via Tavistock and Okehampton, should be run, as it always was, as a Plymouth to London Waterloo service. However, it could be run as a circular, Exeter/Okehampton/ Tavistock/Plymouth/Newton Abbot/ Dawlish/Exeter service.
Kevin Cook Ex-BR railway civil engineer and
now Westcountry rail historian