Many years ago, clutching my first ever First Class pass, I accompanied my late uncle on a week-long inspection of the signalling and operation of the North Cornwall lines from Okehampton to Halwill and on to the Atlantic Coast destinations of Wadebridge, Padstow and Bude, together with the light rail branch to Torrington.
Little did I know – though I now suspect he did – that all these destinations were about to be erased from the railway map, almost certainly forever, with services from Okehampton itself withdrawn just a couple of years later.
We based ourselves there, and I well remember the early morning walk up the hill to the station to join the connection off the 01.15 newspaper and mail train from Waterloo. So I was particularly pleased to see the recent reopening of the station and restoration of the service to and from Exeter.
After 50 years of neglect, £40.5 million for 14 miles of railway restored in the very same week as the announcement of the Government’s appalling Integrated Rail Plan. What a remarkable coincidence. Or perhaps not.
But the Department for Transport tactic worked. Instead of giving the IRP the shredding it deserved, The Sunday Times splashed ‘the great branch line revival…
