The big news is, that as of today the service is now hourly. For the previous two weeks, the service was suspended while essential engineering work was completed. This included vital drainage work at Fatherford. To complete this work, a section of track had to be removed. Drainage was also addressed at Coleford. This has enabled the speed of the line to be increased to enable trains to pass at Crediton.

The existing success of the line, has seen 50,000 journeys taken in the first 20 weeks. This far exceeds the pre-service targets of GWR. The new hourly service will surely see that figure increase at an even faster rate due to a better choice of trains.

The second thing to report, is the recent visit of the Rail Minister Wendy Morton. There is a brilliant report on The Dartmoor Line website, and it can be seen that she was impressed. Our Chair Dr Michael Ireland, was invited to meet her. He was able to talk about put the case forward for future developments. Hopefully this will help the application for leveling up money to see a new transport hub to be built on the eastern side of the town which will include a car park, bus interchange, electric car chargers and of course a new station. The application is in, but we won’t hear if we have been successful or not until later this year. We will post more information as we get it.

Thirdly, as a group who are passionate about Okehampton to Exeter, we are also passionate about local railway connections. As a result we are supporting Connect Bude. They are a group looking to see the reintroduction of a passenger service from Okehampton to the Cornish seaside town. You can read about what they have done so far, and future aspirations here.

We have recently also started giving advice and support to ACE (Atlantic Coast Express) Rail, who have recently started campaigning to reconnect Bideford to the rail network via Barnstaple. At the moment they don’t have a website, but they do have a Facebook group. More to follow on these projects in due course.

We’re delighted to be supporting these two groups, as they try to get their respective lines reconnected.

Finally, now the service is back and hourly, we’d love to hear from you about your travels. Where did you go? Was it business, or holiday, or something else? We’d love to post your stories with maybe a a picture. Please get in touch via our contact page.