> In 1997, Devon County Council revived a passenger rail service from Exeter, on summer weekends only, in an attempt to reduce motor traffic to the national park.
I don't think it's strange. Aren't businesses in the area more likely to be closed on Sunday? So people are more likely to go shopping and run other errands on Saturday?
In the UK, rail service is governed by law. The Government assigns companies to manage a particular route and if the company no longer wants to run the route, the only options are selling it to another company, reducing the service significantly or going through the law system to get it changed. Often the easiest option is just massively reducing the service.
I grew up in Devon, most families have cars anyway because the infrastructure just isn't hugely supported in that part of the country, so it wasn't hugely beneficial to have the train to just Exeter.
Lastly, Okehampton isn't a major tourist destination for the South West. Its close to Dartmoor, but you need a car to explore that area affectively, it's not near any beaches where people normally go to Devon/Cornwall for
Essentially the line went through the closure procedure and was completely closed to passengers back in the 1970s, however it remained open for stone trains from a quarry on the line.
The quarry bought the line and ran their own trains.
They occasionally allowed occasional passenger services.
Various groups tried to run the route as a heritage railway between 1997 and 2019.
The local county council subsidised a few experimental timetabled services on Sundays to see if there was a demand.
This is very expensive for the council and they probably couldn't afford a 5 or 7 day a week service. Plus Sundays are a less busy timetable in general so some spare trains may be available that is not available the rest of the week.
(Saving the need to obtain additional trains for the extra work)
Also I seem to recall, but can't source the statement, that the quarry owners may have set a limit on when and how many passenger trains could run over their line. Ie possibly Sundays ok, Weekdays not.
It probably made them next to nothing, while incurring extra expense because passenger lines have higher requirements than freight lines. The more that run the higher the cost.
Finally a government programme to reopen railways supported the full reopening that happened a few days ago. This involved buying the line and repairing the track.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 31.7 ms ] threadWhy? I could get the line only being open for weekend trips, but I can't see the point of just some summer Sundays.
> In 1997, Devon County Council revived a passenger rail service from Exeter, on summer weekends only, in an attempt to reduce motor traffic to the national park.
I grew up in Devon, most families have cars anyway because the infrastructure just isn't hugely supported in that part of the country, so it wasn't hugely beneficial to have the train to just Exeter.
Lastly, Okehampton isn't a major tourist destination for the South West. Its close to Dartmoor, but you need a car to explore that area affectively, it's not near any beaches where people normally go to Devon/Cornwall for
Essentially the line went through the closure procedure and was completely closed to passengers back in the 1970s, however it remained open for stone trains from a quarry on the line.
The quarry bought the line and ran their own trains.
They occasionally allowed occasional passenger services.
Various groups tried to run the route as a heritage railway between 1997 and 2019.
The local county council subsidised a few experimental timetabled services on Sundays to see if there was a demand.
This is very expensive for the council and they probably couldn't afford a 5 or 7 day a week service. Plus Sundays are a less busy timetable in general so some spare trains may be available that is not available the rest of the week. (Saving the need to obtain additional trains for the extra work)
Also I seem to recall, but can't source the statement, that the quarry owners may have set a limit on when and how many passenger trains could run over their line. Ie possibly Sundays ok, Weekdays not.
It probably made them next to nothing, while incurring extra expense because passenger lines have higher requirements than freight lines. The more that run the higher the cost.
Finally a government programme to reopen railways supported the full reopening that happened a few days ago. This involved buying the line and repairing the track.
Regular train services have returned to the Dartmoor line in Devon for the first time in 49 years.
Great Western Railway (GWR) trains is operating the route between Okehampton and Exeter as part of a government scheme to restore abandoned lines.
GWR is initially running trains every two hours with plans to increase it to hourly services in 2022.
Since 1997, the line has only been open on some summer Sundays after regular services stopped in 1972.