With Goddard, and I am fairly sure it was him, I think it was a simple mistake: assuming the main line via Westbury was built in the same era as other mainlines. He is normally a fairly thorough researcher, but even Homer nods. His books to cover a variety of areas: some are purely historical, some mix past and present (*), some are purely modern or at least recent. Locations vary from purely or substantially home-based to Europe and elsewhere.
He has a far wider range than many authors and usually a new protagonist in each book: there are a couple of trilogies. I prefer the historical or mixed historical/modern books and have generally been more satisfied by his earlier works, although some of the recent ones are reasonable.
* - In the sense of past events affecting modern ones, not time-travel. False landscapes are not his style.
I
Having Googled Goddard: I'm now thinking "mistaken identity" -- am suspecting that the author whose stock-in-trade is EU politics / bureaucracy, is a different Robert; I've been avoiding Goddard thanks to confusing him with the other chap ! Visiting my local library, later today -- hope to investigate further.
With the subject of fictional foul-ups concerning London -- West Country rail journeys in past times, having come up: I can't resist citing one encountered earlier this year, which amused me. My regrettable quasi-misogynistic tendency comes up again, I'm afraid -- the feeling that most female authors who "tangle with" railway detail: can't properly get their heads round it, and get stuff wrong, no matter how hard they try. A couple of months ago, I made a post largely re this particular instance, in a topic-drift in the
Gavin and Stacey Episode 2 thread on this sub-forum -- can't restrain self from telling of it here too !
The novel is
Night Shall Overtake Us by Kate Saunders, another favourite author of mine: set in the fifteen-odd years before / during / after World War I -- for me mostly (with a couple of reservations) an enjoyable and moving read, if one likes that kind of thing. At one point -- in summer 1914, just before the erupting of you-know-what -- a couple of the characters undertake a hasty day's journey from London to Barnstaple and return, to track down and confront in their rural retreat, other characters re a personal crisis then taking place. The journey as recounted, has one feeling that Kate has tried to do her homework concerning such a rail journey at that particular date; but made a not-very-good job of same, ending up with a "worst of both worlds" deal. They travel by GWR express from Paddington to Exeter; where they "change to a little lurching branch-line train, full of farmers' wives, which took them as far as Barnstaple" (one wonders why this seeming snobbish disdain for farmers' wives -- would those ladies not be found, on the whole, to be thoroughly worthy and admirable citizens?). Their remote ultimate destination has to be reached by road from Barnstaple -- the narrow-gauge L & B unfortunately does not get a part in the drama. And clearly from the context, they go back the same way: LSWR from Barnstaple to Exeter, then GWR express Exeter -- London.
One would think that in 1914, a person desirous of making such a journey would do so either using the GWR throughout: express Paddington -- Taunton, then Taunton -- Dulverton -- Barnstaple; or all-LSWR: Waterloo -- Exeter, whence at least some kind of semi-fast (maybe through) working to Barnstaple -- presumably fairly free of the farmers'-wife menace which seems to bother the characters; and similarly in the London-bound direction. The novel's characters are pretty intelligent and on-the-ball; and presumably there was in pre-Grouping times, ample advice available to the public concerning the most expeditious ways of travelling by rail between A and B.
Further reprehensible prejudice on my part, concerning "lady authors and railways" -- have lately been re-reading
The Far Pavilions by M.M. Kaye -- a sort of Indian equivalent of
Gone With The Wind: again, in my opinion terrific stuff "if one likes"... At one point in the complicated and eventful narrative, there is a bit of railway detail which I
think the author -- though born in India and having spent much of her life there, and in the main very knowledgeable about "things Indian" -- has got wrong. It's 1878: the hero -- an officer in Britain's army in India -- is being transferred from a posting in what is nowadays Gujarat, to the North-West Frontier. He wishes to take with him, his favourite and valuable horse (as you do...); thus, is conferring with the stationmaster at Ahmadabad about horse-boxes for the purpose. Paraphrasing -- the helpful stationmaster warns him of the difficulties and the much advance-planning which will be involved: "... there are too many trains, all of different gauges ... I obtain a horse-box for you on the Bombay and Baroda line ... but that is only a small part of your journey ... what will occur when you arrive at Bombay Central and find that none is available on the Great Indian Peninsula Railway, to which you will transfer there? Or when you must change at Aligarh onto the East Indian Railway line, which is again different gauge, and there is likewise no horse-box?" ("[
sic]" applies definitely, I think, to several things in this last sentence).
I much suspect, from what I, a bit vaguely, know (don't have available full chapter-and-verse to quote, if challenged); that as well as the railway geography of the northern end of the described putative journey, seeming decidedly dodgy -- the author's attempt at providing "local colour" re the suggested gauge-related chaos, gets into realms of considerable error. The implication is, of India's being as Australia was in former days, with a very inconvenient wild mish-mash of different gauges. This was in fact never the case: main lines there were either 5ft. 6in. gauge (the entire putative journey as above, would have been on 5ft. 6in.); or metre gauge -- used essentially for main lines of secondary importance, in certain parts of India only. Furthermore -- in 1878 when this part of the story's action takes place: by my understanding, use of metre gauge in India was then in an initial, minimal stage -- basically, the metre-gauge secondary network grew up only in the last couple of decades of the 19th century, and thence in the 20th.
By all ideas of sensible behaviour: this kind of nitpicking by eccentric folk such as us, of factual-or-not railway minutiae in fiction which is essentially about other subjects anyway -- is, putting it as politely as possible, a strange way to carry on; but we're apt to enjoy it, and it doesn't harm anyone -- certainly not the authors, in the shape of lost income because of people boycotting their books ! A thing which not only railway enthusiasts do: many people find that, concerning their job or profession re which they are of course very well-informed -- fiction writing / films / TV drama, touching tangentially on whatever the subject may be, are frequently riddled with smallish errors about it. There has been plentiful correspondence on these Forums, particularly about such howlers in films: on railway, and other, issues.