Heart of Oak

Another one of my fictitious railway images, this time featuring trains that were a little late for this particular route, the London and South Western Railway mainline from Exeter St Davids to Plymouth via Okehampton and Tavistock.

Seen rumbling through the station with a single mail van from Plymouth to Exeter is Network SouthEast liveried Class 50, 50017 'Royal Oak', during its final years of service. In the bay platform, a hired in Class 150 from the Regional Railways 'Centro' division is seen awaiting departure with a stopping service back towards Plymouth.

The LSWR mainline was opened in 1851 as an alternative route to the Great Western's mainline along the Sea Wall through Dawlish and Teignmouth. The route travelled north from Exeter to Crediton, then west across the northern flank of Dartmoor through tough valleys and farmland before reaching Okehampton and Tavistock, before working south along the banks of the River Tamar and entering Plymouth from the west. The route also formed the basis of many other mainline routes on the former Southern Region, including lines to Barnstaple (which still exists today), Bude, Padstow, Launceston and Bodmin.

The line was closed in part in 1968 under the Beeching Axe, a move that has since been the bane of railway operations in the south west of England as now with only one route between Plymouth and Exeter which is prone to bad weather along the Sea Wall, a diversionary route is no longer possible. This would have come in handy in February 2014, when a large section of the Wall at Dawlish was washed away by storms, thus cutting off all points west and stranding several trains.

This scene however depicts the route if it was left open. In fact this section continues to exist as after closure, the line between Crediton and Meldon Quarry (2 miles west of Okehampton) was served by stone trains until the mid-2000's. In that time however the Dartmoor Railway was established and now operates a small fleet of heritage locomotives and DMU's operating between Okehampton and a small halt at Meldon Quarry. Plans are in motion however to return the route to full working order so as to act as a diversionary line following the 2014 storms, but mountains of red tape and bureaucratic nitpicking are hampering what should be simple common sense.