FGW have strengthened some DMU services in the last year or two, FGW have found spare DMUs to run Swindon - Westbury, FGW have acquired quite a few 150s from LM/LO, yet they don't seem to think it worth introducing weekday services to Okehampton (just the tourist-friendly Sunday ones).
That suggests to me that they don't think there's going to be a big market from Okehampton to Exeter.
It is unfortunate for Torbay that the weakest link is so near to them but that is a fact, one that's been known about for decades and, in the true British spirit that Nigel Farage is now trying to tap, we must throw our hands up saying 'but nobody told us' and then go back to sticking our heads in what remains of the Dawlish sand
Interesting choice of words there. "Unfortunate"? Basically, sod them, they aren't as important as Cornish passengers?
The populace of Torbay and South Hams (which does not appear to include you) will continue to have their rail link to the outside world but for how long?
You are right, I don't live in the South Hams. I know that Forum etiquette on here seems to be to argue passionately for your own local line to be gold plated (above every other route), but I'm trying to consider the bigger picture and don't think that we can just dismiss services to Torbay.
Why should West Devon and Cornwall be forced to hang on to their coat-tails when an alternative, available and viable route exists for us?
Anything is "available" if you spend large sums of money building it first. A Dawlish Avoiding Line is equally "available" (but doesn't abandon the Torbay passengers).
I am sure that in an emergency it could be arranged for trains from Newton Abbot to Exeter to be routed via Plymouth and Tavistock, in fact there's a germ of an idea there, a circular serxice from Exeter
It's wishful thinking to assume that passengers would travel from Newton Abbot to Exeter via Plymouth, sorry. They'll just be dumped on the replacement coach services (that the Cornish passengers are too good for)
Regarding direct transport links (bus) from Okehampton to Plymouth, Plymouth Citybus operate a popular one via Tavistock
Sorry, you are right...
http://www.plymouthbus.co.uk/site/uploads/publications/1309.htm
...It may be "popular" but it only seems to run around every two hours (with a three hour gap in the middle of the day), and the last Okehampton bus leaves Plymouth before 16:00, so it doesn't look like it's evidence of much demand to get from Okehampton to Plymouth.
I wouldn't be building a train line on that basis. However, new train stations have generally worked when there's a regular bus service (Ebbw Vale to Cardiff, Alloa to Stirling), so it seems a good bellweather of what number of people can be converted onto a train.
Re no stations or lines closing, tell that to the many who lost the South London Line last autumn after a century of operation, and if you're going to be pedantic about Stockport to Stalybridge I can match you with the Ealing Broadway to Wandsworth Road weekly service which ran its last about a year ago
No stations have closed though, no lines closed (a chord that saw only one passenger train a week lost its one passenger service a week) - the frequent Overground replacement for the SLL has opened up lots of journey opportunities.
It should also be noted that no where in this argument is anyone suggeting that there should be two routes in Cornwall, just between Exeter and Plymouth to the benefit of Cornwall
Yes, that's interesting - it's apparently okay for Cornwall to be at the mercy of long sections of single track within Cornwall, but not for it to be at the mercy of a bi-directional section of double track at Dawlish.
Difference is that there's not the "BRING BACK THE LSWR" argument for diversions within Cornwall, I suppose.
The redoubling of the line through Cornwall, although useful could be done in stages including more passing loops
Yes, much more useful - genuine everyday benefits to a decent number of people.
I'd rather we had a robust railway 99% of the times than continuing with single track bottlenecks (but having an Okehampton diversion for the handful of days that the Dawlish route may be unavailable).
The redoubling of the WofE line would require more 158's/159's, which given the lack of DMU's would mean that it is likely to be on the back burner until electrification of the line and/or electrification of a lot of other lines. As even just extending the services which currenly make it to Yeovil would require at least 3 additional units
So the redoubling of the busy line from Salisbury to Exeter is impractical because there are no spare DMUs, but we should still build an Okehampton route (to be operated by, erm...)?
Firstly Torbay services would still be able to rum the long way around, which wouldn't be useful for the local services, but people may still use it if they were going a long way. As even if you had an extra 100 minutes over the time when you could go direct there are people who would be willing to do so rather than get on a coach and then get on the train at Exeter
Nobody is going to sit on a train from Torbay to Exeter via Plymouth. The service bus only takes around an hour (Stagecoach X46?) - a "rail replacement" coach would be faster - nobody is going to spend over two hours on a train in that case.
Also (even if noone wanted to do that) it would mean that the scrum for coaches at Exeter would be lot less and therefore it would be less of a problem (which for avoidance of doubt would still a pain in the neck, just less so than how it is at present)
Ah, those pesky Torbay passengers getting in the way of your rail replacement coaches?
There may even be ococians when trains could still get though, but in less numbers than when the line if running fully, when the Plymouth trains could be diverted around and only trains to Torbay would then need to use the line
If that were the case then you'd surely just run HSTs from Exeter to Plymouth/Cornwall (and get Torbay passengers to change at Newton Abbott)?
That doesn't need an expensive Okehampton route.
For instance the stoppers to Torbay could use one rack whilst engineering works (which there would likely be the need for a LOT of to make the line more resilant) happened on the other track rather than eveyone having to jam onto HST between Exeter and Newton Abbot which then stops at all the stations (i.e. the worst of both worlds)
So you could continue to run HSTs through to Penzance/ Cornwall, but those passengers would have to share with the Torbay undesirables? Sounds like a reasonable enough "Plan B" to me.
I agree, however given the cost of the DAL is basicly £1.5bn to £3bn and saves at most 6 minutes on the journey time (i.e. cost about double that of the reopening of the LSWR)
A DAL would be an everyday saving to the 10,000 (plus) passengers a day that use the line through Dawlish.
An Okehampton route would only be of use to around half that number of people on the days when the Dawlish line is closed (plus a few people in Okehampton).
Also the other point to bear in mind is that the train would likely benefit other places as they would have a more frequent service. For instance there is only one train which arrives at Exeter before 9am (and that arrives at 8:12) from Crediton and only one train between 5pm and 6pm (and that is basicly at 6pm) back again in the afternoon, which is hardly likely to temp people to use the train. A new Okehampton service could improve that and therefore mean that more people use both services as going to Exeter by train becomes a viable option
If you want a better peak service from Exeter to Crediton then that requires something like a spare 153 - we don't need the expense of an Okehampton line to provide that!
The WCML was a poor example, the Settle and Carlile line would have been a better one to give. It has a reasonable number of people use it, but mostly for tourisum. It has diversionary benefits, which have proved to have been benifitial time and time again (even if they are not always used, but then if it were electrified as the routes that it would provide the diversion for are electrified it may be another matter)
I can only go with the examples that
YorksRob provides!
The S&C sees a Sprinter every couple of hours, plus a lot of long slow freight services (that mean we can't have the fanciful "fast" services that many on here want).
Any route that sees lots of regular services (like the S&C) on it has a reasonable case - but an Okehampton route wouldn't see a great deal of freight - how much is there west of Exeter these days?
Do nothing is an option, but then so is closing a lines west of Exeter. Neither are likely to happen though because it would be politically a bad move
Doing nothing is a likely option - just organise a few feasibility studies, find a scarily expensive figure for a full re-opening, wait a few months, quietly drop it (blame a change of Government etc).
So vast sums of public money is squandered chasing ~0.15 BCRs? What a wonderful idea that is.
Yes - BECAUSE WE MUST RE-OPEN EVERY REDUNDANT LINE FROM FIFTYISH YEARS AGO (regardless of facts and business cases)!
- undertake the sea wall works and hope that the political backlash which may happen when the line is closed during the summer weekends to provide the protection isn't too bad
OK, IF the government decides to upgrade the Dawlish wall and not provide an alternitive link the people west of Dawlish can look forward to many many weekends of no trains as the upgrade works are undertaken. That politically could be as bad as doing nothing
You're scaremongering here (suggesting that it'd have to be done at the peak tourist-time) - plus that work would need to be done for the people of Torbay anyway
A DAL wouldn't mean disruption at Dawlish, of course!
Yes, but there are other rail alternatives to get to most places on the WCML. Not so west of Exeter.
There are plenty of lines with no realistic railway alternative. Nobody is going to travel from central belt Scotland to Aberdeen via Inverness. Nobody is going to travel from Bristol/ London/ Birmingham to Cardiff via Shrewsbury and the Heart of Wales.
Even when there is an obvious diversion (like the Brigg line from South Yorkshire to Grimsby/Cleethorpes), it's often too much hassle to arrange diversions.
And obviously no diversionary alternatives west of Plymouth and seemingly no desire to build one either (since it's not as romantic as the Okehampton idea).
From a Penzance perspective probably shared throughout Cornwall and West, even parts of North, Devon we just want a railway service to Exeter, Bristol, Birmingham, Reading and London that isn't going to get flooded or blown away with increasing regularity
Increasing regularity? Weekly? Monthly? One week a year?
Why don't Torbay passengers deserve as regular a service to Exeter as you btw?
It therefore follows that we don't give a damn whether our train goes through Dawlish or not- personally I think the seascape isn't a patch on Mounts Bay
Sounds like you don't give a damn about Torbay
Who was it who said 'tell me what conclusion you want and I'll provide the statistics to back it up'?
Probably the person who said "I'll find some excuse to re-open some scenic branch line that was abandoned fifty years ago"
My personal favourite was that we can't have "Britain's biggest Naval port cut off" (despite no navy traffic going via rail that I am aware of).
Doesn't matter, the answer is always "re-open Okehampton"
Know I'll get a lot of hostility for this, so it would be nice to receive some support too
I don't think you've had hostility?
Claiming major outages are going to be regular enough to worry about after a single occurrence is more than a little alarmist isn't it?
Yup.
If you were reading this without knowledge of the UK/ Devon/ recent history then you'd think that the Dawlish line closed at least once a week!
But a northern alternative route would carry thousands of passengers if the same disastrous consequences happened again along the sea wall or at any of the other neighbouring coastal locations.
Yes - IF the Dawlish line closed.
The other 95% of the time it'd carry very few passengers on the Tavistock to Crediton section, so wouldn't be as useful.
During any further disruption along the sea wall route passengers would still be able to get to the Torbay area via Plymouth.
I know what you're going to say, the journey time to Torbay will take longer. Yes, it would take longer to reach those destinations, but at least a reasonable rail service could still be maintained with connections to the south-west and stations east of Exeter.
See comments above
serious flooding in Newlyn has occurred 5 times since 1990, 4 of which were within last nineteen months
...yet there's no demands on here to provide robust diversionary alternatives in Cornwall to deal with the kind of flooding you mention?
If the LSWR had built an alternative line through Cornwall then there would be!
Leaving aside Woolacombe (which has a much better beach than any in Torbay) Torbay has about half the population of Plymouth and a quarter of the population of Cornwall
Population isn't the whole story. Most people in Cornwall won't leave Cornwall every day (or certainly go east of Plymouth).
The population of Torbay is smaller than the population of Cornwall, but a larger percentage of those people travel to/from Exeter on any given day.
Passenger numbers are a more relevant guide to how many people are affected than (local) government boundaries.
Anyway I don't think anyone is suggesting closure of the line to Torbay - just that the Dawlish stretch is not well suited to its current purpose and needs an alternative of which the cheapest is the already partly extant Okehampton route, which would at least keep three quarters of a million Plymothians and Cornish attached to the national network on those occasions when Torbayers might have to put up with either slow trains or a bus from Newton Abbot to Exeter.
Cornwall deserves an alternative route to Exeter - Torbay doesn't deserve one (and should rely on replacement buses)?
So first it is going to be impractical to maintain the Dawlish route as a functioning railway - now it is practical but for some reason only if a significant fraction of the traffic is taken off of it.....
Why is a continually disrupted (as that is what you claim will happen) railway suitable for Paignton and Totnes, but not for Plymouth and so on?
You will have to pay to maintain the railway via Dawlish in either case if you want to keep it open.
So you have shredded your own business case
Agreed - the idea that we can maintain a Dawlish sea wall only good enough to maintain Torbay trains is a strange one
I'm getting hints of inferiority complex from some on this. You will get your Dawlish upgrade so what's the problem - a nagging realisation that it won't last?
The only inferiority I can see is the dismissive attitude to those in Torbay.
If the Dawlish upgrade is good enough then there's no "diversionary" justification for an Okehampton route. Okehampton can stand/fall on its own two feet without this pretext.
I suppose if Torbay were suddenly to get a diptheria epidemic (say) there'd be calls to move patients to Plymouth or Truro because it wouldn't be fair otherwise. Long live Harry Enfield's Wayne and Waynetta.
Is it just me who's getting confused here?
The reason I keep banging on about it is because very few others on here seem to care - so why not? All I want is the best for my area -
it contains some of the most deprived wards in the country and I want to see it do better, which means arguing for better infrastructure and services, neither of which have been in much supply in recent decades.
I'm honestly surprised at how dismissive people are on this thread of Torbay - they seem perfectly happy to abandon it to the kind of "regular" disruption that they don't want Cornwall to befall.
Torbay is a lovely part of the country, but is being treat d like a "second class" area by many on this thread.
Teignbridge is so close to Exeter that a lot have Exeter phone numbers so I don't think they count for your Torbay population. Likewise for the South Hams population many of whom are on Plymouth's doorstep so they are hardly Torbay either
They may not come under the Torbay definition (I don't know local Government boundaries in that neck of the woods, I think it counterproductive to get hung up on these things), but the South Hams/ Teignbridge passengers are going to be without an Exeter train if the Dawlish line is closed.
The BCR calculations show that it is indeed alright to have the railway disrupted as it is now.
And it is hard to imagine a scenario that would Dawlish to reliably support 1-2tph for Totnes and Paignton but not the current service.
Either the track is intact or it is not.
Yup - can't have it both ways - either we built a reliable Dawlish wall capable of maintaining a train service 95% of the time or we don't.
This idea that we can build half a sea defence (that'll only allow local trains through for Torbay, but not be able to cope with Cornish trains) is a strange one.
What touching faith in BCR calculations!
What's your alternative? Just trust the rail atlas from a hundred years ago?
I would have thought it is quite easy to suggest that inner track single line, line of sight running might be necessary during storms so there would be no capacity problem on the line
Line of sight running is okay for Torbay trains, but not okay for Cornish trains?
If capacity is restricted on the Dawlish line, due to it going down to single track, then surely it'd be better to run the long Cornish trains (rather than wasting scarce paths on short Torbay DMUs)?
It's the best there is, a recognised assessment tool, and has enabled many, many rail investments that less than 20 years ago would have been point blank refused.
If someone else wants to come up with a creditable alternative, feel free (and good luck).
Incidentally, I gather that reliable figures of single trips across 'the breach' are in the order of 12,000 per day. Which means that to get to the £20m per day economic loss quoted in some reports, each passenger trip would contribute nearly £1700 to the south west economy. I think I'm going to start busking on those trains!
