The museum on platform 2 at Okehampton has details of how each section of the withered arm reachable from there was closed one after the other in quick succession. At the time the MP for the Torrington constituency which included Okehampton Peter Mills described this as creeping closures. Given that Okehampton was the last section to close and has now been the first to reopen, I expect we will now see a series of creeping reopenings. First Tavistock - Bere Alston, then Okehampton - Tavistock, Okehampton - Bude and Okehampton - Launceston, if not Okehampton - Padstow. Bude was until 20 November 2021 the furthest town in England from a railway station. I don't know where is now. Barnstaple - Ilfracombe is also a consideration in all this, however it will not occur on the same timescale as the original closures. Once Tavistock has reopened we will have an idea of the sort of interval to expect before the next reopening in the same area, however I would bet that it will be within 5 years.
They were talking about reopening to Okehampton as early as 1971! In the 1980s we were still seeing closures with the loss of Woodhead and March - Spalding, both vitally important trunk freight routes. The attempted and ultimately unsuccessful closure of the profitable Settle - Carlisle line made all future cases for closing a line untenable, a realisation that came only 30 years too late. Scotland were like with all things ahead of us with the Borders Railway in 2015 but now the tide has truly turned in favour of outright reopenings with Okehampton and I eagerly await the almost certain delivery of the next, which I anticipate to be the Newcastle, Ashington, Blyth and Tyne line, although this is more of a commuter line without the tourism potential of Dartmoor. I don't know how long they've been talking about reopening it because it will cost a lot more than Okehampton despite the track being extant for freight if several station buildings need to be built. At least conveniently Okehampton had an original one in good condition.
I think there are a lot of people who can't ever remember the railway to Portishead who are in support of opening one now and there still would be even if there was no one alive who could, as well as there being passengers under the age of 50 who are already regularly using the line to Okehampton and the Borders Railway, but not necessarily both. Okehampton was certainly not an existing railway. Other than for the glorious station building, no part of the line could be reused. The track had not previously been replaced since 1908 and Network Rail effectively needed to start from scratch. Modern equipment such as GSM-R had never been installed and without the construction of an entirely new railway, trains would have been limited to the 25mph of heritage railways. Bury - Rochdale would be useful but not without Bolton - Bury to create a through Manchester bypass route for local and long distance passenger and freight traffic from Southport, Kirkby and Wigan to the Calder Valley and Yorkshire freeing up capacity and improving reliability in congested Manchester. Reopening Kenyon Junction - Bolton via Leigh in conjunction and coming up with a way to weave it into the L&Y Trinity Street station (which would probably involve a tunnelling from Atherton to join the L&Y line somewhere between Trinity Street and Lostock Junction) would create a through route to Liverpool and Warrinton Bank Quay via Earlestown as well providing a direct service from Leigh, the biggest town in the north west without a railway station, to Liverpool, Wigan, Golborne (if reopened), Bolton, Bury and Manchester. Bury - Rawtenstall would be appreciated in conjunction with the return of heavy rail services and the carriage of bicycles to the Bury line (Metrolink to Rawtenstall is a non-starter) although the loss of the East Lancs Railway would be significant unless heritage services are given paths on the reopened line in addition to passengers and freight, even if only on certain days. I do admit that Ramsbottom - Accrington, Rawtenstall - Bacup and Rochdale - Bacup are unlikely though. If Bolton - Bury is not progressed then I would favour a shorter branch from Rochdale to Heywood, creating an end on connection with the East Lancs Railway rather than infringing it.
Skelmersdale, which is not the largest town in the north west without a railway station, requires 10 new track miles (some redoubling and some new construction) to be connected to Liverpool and Manchester (although Skelmersdale would be better served by a more frequent shuttle to Wigan Wallgate) while severing the direct service between Rainford and Upholland, but the issue with it is there is no existing commuting culture in Skelmersdale while there is no also reason to visit Skelmersdale from outside, so there will be little to no modal shift and it has to rely entirely on new passenger journeys. The most visited destination from Skelmersdale is Ormskirk which the railway doesn't intend to serve. From elsewhere, the present demand is not suppressed but rather non existent. Thats not to say Skelmerdale shouldn't be connected to the rail network, but as far as West Lancashire rail schemes go, the Burscough Curves require a tenth of the amount of new track and no land purchase to cut journey times from Southport to Ormskirk and Preston by hours, benefitting 10x more people in both urban and rural communities, including Southport and unlike Skelmersdale, the demand already exists to travel from Southport to Ormskirk, Preston and beyond and intermediate stations in between, it is merely suppressed by universal problems with the road network and the lack of an M59 motoray. I am not happy at all at the suggestion that there shouldn't be multiple reopenings within close proximity of each other because then neighbouring communities are having to fight against each other over who should have a railway. The Skelmersdale scheme can't be progressed benefitting only Skelmersdale at the expense of the Burscough Curves which provide benefits to many more people across the wider West Lancashire and surrounding areas, although Skelmersdale. It would be a larger project but if the Skelmersdale scheme is progressed, building a line from Ormskirk to Skelmersdale as a phase 2 would create a through route from Ormskirk to Wigan and Manchester and see trains much more heavily loaded, as well as improve the case for the aforementioned Manchester bypass line via Bury.
The Borders Line effect was that the Borders are no longer isolated from Edinburgh or the rest of Scotland (but remain isolated from Carlisle and the rest of England). I'm you are aware what my favoured reopening is, being isolated from Preston. When I visited Carlisle myself, it took me longer to get from Southport to Preston than from Preston to Carlisle, which was fortunate because I had to stand the whole way on a crush loaded TPE service.
There will simply have to be infrastructure work south of Bere Alston or it won't be possible to reopen to Tavistock with any more than a 2 hourly to Tavistock in the path of the present Gunnislake with an hourly Gunnislake - Bere Alston shuttle, but that wouldn't be much use without a Plymouth service for it to connect to. If you wanted to do no infrastructure work at all on the existing network, you could theoretically just extend the single platform track from Bere Alston to Tavistock and run a 2 hourly Plymouth - St Budeaux - Bere Alston - Tavistock - Bere Alston - Gunnislake - Bere Alston - Tavistock - Bere Alston - St Budeaux - Plymouth service with 1 unit but would hardly be the best way to have the infrastructure.
