Morning and greetings from Exeter,
outside St Davids Station
on a grey and chilly November morning.
(heavy breaths)
Yeah, I can see my breath.
But I'm about to put some warmth, some sunshine,
some excitement into my life
as we ride today on a restored part of the railway.
It's getting a daily commuter service
for the first time in 50 years.
We'll talk about the Sunday service as well.
That's the line from Exeter out to Okehampton,
the Dartmoor line has reopened.
(train engine roaring)
We've come up with an immediate, good question.
Have they included the Dartmoor line and Okehampton
in the Devon ranger slash rover ticket?
Andrew, the ticket member staff officer who recognised me,
seems to think you can.
Thanks Andrew, give us away. Cheers
Bye, bye, bye. See you
That's Andrew.
I'm fairly sure, last time I was here,
the dot matrix boards were like traditional orange ones.
They've now got the fancy white on black ones.
Props. Congratulations.
By the way to GWR for actually producing like a guide with
an actual timetable, you don't have to rely on the PDF.
Well done. Thank you.
But I just bought the Devon day ranger, thanks to Andrew,
The ticket office that confirmed that it does fall under the
scope of a day ranger ticket.
I bought myself a 14 pound day ranger ticket,
just so I can go up and down the line as much as I like.
I see the 8:31, off to Painter.
It's saying that the 8:38 to Okehampton is
oh, it's delayed.
I'm sure it'll be here soon.
Calling at Crediton and Okehampton only.
So my friend, Rob, who works with GWR,
who you remember was in the
Redcar British steel video
is here as well. Hey Rob!
Actual physical paper timetables are the way forward.
They are the future. Let's just analyse the service pattern,
got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight
trains on Monday to Friday and Saturday,
seven on a Sunday.
Five out of the eight, go to central.
Three of them terminate at St. David's and reverse.
It's a two hour pattern.
So it's between like seven in the morning
through to 10 at night.
And the plan is, I believe,
maybe after the December timetable change,
or maybe next year,
it will step up to an hourly service.
That will be awesome. But currently eight trains a day.
Everyone's been saying how this line was
closed due to beaching.
But you're saying that's not the case.
Yeah, it's a common misconception.
So the 1960, or whenever it was
(indistinct) from docks beaching actually kept
Okehampton open,
but it did propose the closure of the lines Bude,
Longsdon, Plymouth, (indistinct) Hampton and so on.
And that basically left the Okehampton line
on a bit of a stub from (indistinct) and St. David's.
Cause from '97 onwards,
Devon county council funded a summer Sunday service only.
So you may remember in 2017,
all the stations we visited this line
and Sampford Courtney was open.
It's not now, and Okehampton GWR
run a summer Sunday service only.
So it used to run one out of seven days during the summer.
And now it's back to a seven day a week service, but yes,
its return after 50 years of a regular daily service.
And in case you were thinking, where's the map, Jeff,
here it is with the Dartmoor line
branching off from the Tarka Line at Yeoford.
And it heads west to Okehampton.
Sampford Courtney is now officially closed,
but there is a proposal in an advanced stage
to build a new station along the line,
called Okehampton Parkway,
which will have a large car park to really encourage people
to get the train to Exeter and not drive.
Quick stop at Crediton.
Hello, Crediton.
Crediton benefits from having
this additional service as well.
And when the Okehampton branch goes hourly
Crediton will then I think
get a half-hourly service.
So it's good news for the people of Crediton as well.
I'm also looking at my (indistinct) disused abandoned map,
which shows that actually
there's an old station called Bow.
And an old station called North Tawton along here,
both very disused and abandoned
along now with Sampford Courtney
which was served by the summer Sunday service.
But no more. It is just Okehampton, after Crediton.
Although I didn't know that on the timetable
that Newton St Cyres
which is a request stop all the time does get the occasional
service, occasional like one or two a day.
The GWR schedulers in their wisdom,
Hi, whoever you are,
decided to give Newton St Cyres
a couple of extra bonus stops.
I don't know why.
I'm sure the residents of Newton St Cyres
are very pleased about that.
That's the branch that's going up to Barnstaple.
(indistinct)
Normally on video, we just look at things,
YouTube tune in your ears. Can you hear?
Yes, you can hear the diesel,
but what you can't hear is clackety-clack,
clackety-clack. It's smooth.
This is what network rail-Rob?-
Southwest have done.
They've laid continuous welded rail
along this whole section.
So there's now a smoother, quieter ride.
There's no clackety-clack.
There's the platform.
Oh, and there's people waiting.
Oh, there's quite a lot of people waiting.
Oh, that's busy.
That's really busy.
Oh, that's great.
Loads of passengers.
Oh, that's great to see.
That's a lot of people, it's maybe 40, 50 people.
That's a healthy number of passengers.
GWR will be pleased to see that.
I'm over on platform two slash one.
The operational trains come in on platform three.
You can see the tracks are different.
Now, 2017, all the stations down there,
you were able to get a heritage line,
the Dartmoor railway out three miles to Meldon viaducts.
But sadly in the interim period, that is no longer running.
That is no longer a thing. But over here,
the Dartmoor Railway Association still exists.
It's still a thing.
And there's a museum and a gentleman called Ron.
That's going to show me around and chat to me.
What've we got?
This is one of one part of our museum.
We have for the Dartmoor Railway Association
going back many years.
The (indistinct) and things like that
normally go out weekends when we're here.
We've still got the original fireplace
from many, many years ago.
So you're here on Wednesdays doing admin,
But (indistinct) says you're open at a weekend
so if people want to visit the museum
weekends is the time?
That is correct. Yeah.
And if we're here on a Wednesday,
we're more than happy to open it up for visitors.
And you've also got your shop area with all your
books and stuff.
We've got the shop down there,
which is most of it's donated to us
and we sell on for a little profit
to help us run the Dartmoor Railway Association.
Okay. Awkward question. Put you on the spot.
Will the old line to Meldon ever be reinstated
do we think?
What's the situation there?
Fingers crossed,
We are hoping we will be able to run a heritage railway
in a few years' time from here to Meldon.
Where are we going?
It is part of the museum,
but at the present is used as a storage area.
Oh.
There's a nice model there, of the Meldon Viaduct.
Oh, I see, right.
I didn't bring my drone today.
So I'm just going to hover my camera like this.
Imagine my camera's now, now a drone,
just like impressively,
getting an aerial shot of the Meldon Viaduct.
Like that. It's almost the same, isn't it?
Ron, what's happening with the signal box?
We are hoping that we could get a licence to use it and
hopefully turn it into either a museum
or a model railway in there.
And the track here,
it does carry on towards Meldon Quarry.
The track on the right-hand side
still goes up to Meldon Quarry
and it goes to Meldron Holt and the viaduct.
But the trains at present only run up as far as here,
Okehampton.
And this is the old abandoned platform.
Why were you saying the Bude trains used to be?
Many, many years ago, you used to come to this platform
to get the train to Bude.
Wow.
Just out this side,
my feet are standing on some old rails
to the side of Okehampton station.
There was a marshalling yard, a goods yard,
and the youth hostel association building
is the old goods ship.
So this would have been all railway back in the day.
But I like the fact that there's some old rails down here.
So Rob and I have just been into town,
which is a 10 minute walk that way to just grab a cuppa.
Because it's me, I've got to grab a cuppa.
There is a new bars and arrow symbol.
All the signage is new,
but Okehampton officially got its bars and arrow symbol.
There's also a 118 bus here,
which now has been rerouted
to come up here to serve the station.
And it's just turned up and there has been time to integrate
nicely with, with the times of the trains,
which is nice to see.
And there's also here,
some new ramps for step-free access into the station.
And there's manual boarding ramps,
not in the platforms on the stations,
but onboard the train.
So that does allow for level boarding.
You're David,
Yes.
You go on, you were here in 1966.
I was. On the last train from Bude to Okehampton.
And the last train from Okehampton back to Bude.
Wow. What's it like seeing it now? In 2021?
I love it. I really do. It's brilliant.
Where are you from? Are you from Devon?
No, I live in Bude.
You live in Bude, okay.
We're trying to get the train back to Bude
but it's going to be after my lifetime, I think.
Well, David, I've got to get this train.
Lovely to meet you.
Okay. Thank you.
Enjoy your day.
Cheers.
Okay. So we've got the 11:25 out of Okehampton.
It's going to stop at Crediton,
do little bit of stand time,
and then just cause I fancy having
a bit of jiggery-pokery fun,
with the request stop at Newton St Cyres,
where one train a day in this direction
from Okehampton stops at Newton St Cyres,
we're going to get the bus to Newton St Cyres
and pick up the Okehampton train
at Newton as a request.
So we're at Crediton. Two platforms here.
When they put the hourly service in,
which I believe it's going to be spring next year.
This will be the passing point.
At the moment there's just one train
going up and down.
The hourly service will require two trains.
The doors are closing.
And Rob's off. Bye Rob!
Bye Rob!
That's Rob.
So, got the train to Crediton,
had a cup of tea there obviously
then got the bus number five
down to Newton St Cyres.
I've walked along here.
As I left Rob at Crediton by the way,
he said that if he could only ever go in one more pub
in the rest of his life,
it would be the one behind me over there.
It's called the Beer Engine.
It's an amazing place.
The landlord just saw me.
Will. Hello Will,
and he just gave me a quick look around.
They brew it on site.
Apparently he's also telling me that the network routes,
Southwest, Western division, that have done all the work,
the engineering work to upgrade the Dartmoor line,
are having their, kind of like, a sort of end of project
celebratory party in there
this Thursday coming up in a couple of days' time.
So have fun there it's a really popular place apparently.
It was already popular when you could stop here
on the Barnstaple line,
and now you've got the additional couple,
one in one direction,
two in the other,
less on a Sunday check timetable for details.
Extra additional request stops of the Okehampton train
stopping here as well.
It's 13:31, and there should be a 13:54 stopping,
heading back to Exeter.
And that will be the end of my day.
And I get to tick off Newton St Cyres
on my request stop quest.
Here's a really old sign.
First Great Western I go north, so
GWR need to change this
to say Barnstaple and Okehampton. Thanks.
I've met two other people.
We're going to stick our arms out at the same time. Ready?
Three, two, one.
Yay. Request stop.
And there we go. Back to Exeter, St Davids station.
That wraps up my trip for today,
including a little cheeky request stop.
There was a website for the Dartmoor line.
Dartmoor line dot com
Designed by the Devon and Cornwall railway partnership.
Hello to those guys.
You should check out their website links all down below in
the description. That is it.
There are a daily, regular trains,
two hour service going to an hour as of next year,
back out through Dartmoor to Okehampton from Exeter.
Come ride Britain's newest line and newest daily station.