Cliveblackpool
Member
A Newquay to Falmouth service could have possibilities.Have you ever travelled on the Newquay branch?
It takes trains three quarters of an hour to get 20 miles between Par and Newquay - you can drive Newquay to Truro in little more than half that time, St Austell a good 10 minutes quicker, and Plymouth almost an hour faster - and Par is a good-old-fashioned Victorian junction station in a small village that isn't a destination in itself anyway.
The line may have its uses on summer Saturdays but outside the holiday season it is simply a financial basket case and running more trains up and down will not change that. To speed up journey times would require a brand new line, which is just not going to happen.
If the link from St Dennis Junction to Drinnick Mill were rebuilt to allow trains to reach St Austell that might make it marginally more attractive, but would do little to improve the speed of the trains given the lines' origins as cheaply-built mineral tramways for china clay and other local mining operations.
Just because 20,000 people live in a place does not mean it is a natural market for rail if the railway does not go to the places that people want to get to or takes forever to do so on a roundabout route and requires a change of trains - places far smaller than Newquay where the railway provides the best transport link to places people do want to go generate far more rail traffic, year-round, than Newquay ever will.
The line is open, current traffic is 100,000 a year, so not much risk of hitting a million any time soon, whether or not pots of money were sunk in to make only marginal improvements that will not change the fundamental issues with the line.
And why bother running through trains to Falmouth - and from where, Plymouth/London/the North? The overwhelming majority of the traffic, all year round, is local and the service is half-hourly most of the day, so people travelling further afield don't have long waits for connections at Truro and the extra Cornish main line services will likely deliver more and better connections anyway.
Connecting it with St Austell, and Truro coast to coast.
Newquay services were cut in the 80's. Station reduced to one platform. Newquay signalbox closed. St Dennis Junction passing loop closed.
The only passing loops open is Goonbarrow Junction, which could go at any time, and St Blazey station signal box. St Blazey box controls 2 cctv level crossings - Middleway and st Blazey Bridge level crossings.
This now means a poor service, and there is very few if any local services on a Summer Saturday. They could have kept 2/3 platforms at Newquay, with a token machine. The guard could have locked his train in one platform, changing the points, locking lever, and return the token. But they cut it all up.