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Tavistock-Bere Alston-Plymouth is next. Then Barnstaple-Bideford.

The Development Consent Order will not even be approved much before 2025. Likely opening date is closer to 2033.

@chrisgooding4395 - And don't forget the Bideford re-opening campaign: www.bidefordrailway.co.uk/ace-rail/ - and more generally www.railfuture.org.uk/Devon-and-Cornwall-Reopenings

The Government's promises about extra money will never be honoured

Our friends at www.bidefordrailway.co.uk/ace-rail/ may well have the answer to that one.

Back in 2018 there was a special service of 4 trains on summer Sundays only, funded by Devon County Council. The new service runs hourly 7 days a week all year round. A significant amount of work had to be done on the track to allow services to run faster, and so become a viable option for travelling from the area around Okehampton to Exeter.

There is such a thing as pausing the video.

Railway closures started long before the 1960s. The Beeching report was not the start of railway closures but a speeding up of an existing process. It depends whether you want to reopen a closed railway railway because of some romantic notion to put right a wrong or to solve the problem of global warming, Road congestion and our love affair with the car. Reopening a railway is a really expensive exercise and you are not going to achieve that many of them. A major investment in trams and buses with cheap fares may be a better solution but there are so many people out there who are really fussy about buses and the only way to tempt them out of their cars is by reinstating a train service. Look at the cost and timescales for reinstating Oxford to Cambridge line and you then question whether it’s VFM to do the same with Oxford to Witney line.

@@andrewlong6438 A Strategic Outline Business Case for the new Windrush Line (Oxford - Eynsham / Salt Cross garden village - Witney - Carterton) has recently been commissioned by Oxfordshire County Council. It and any subsequent assessments will inform the VFM and other issues. There are already c.50k people in that A40 corridor beyond 5km of rail access.

@@roglaker9353 The Witney Line originally terminated at Fairford though the intention was to join the Cirenchester Line is the Trackbed to Carterton still intact even on to Fairford and may be someday to Cirenchester but when the Local Proprietors found it difficult to make a profit the GWR who were running the line for 50% of the takings stepped in with a nominal share purchase offer (One of many they did to expand their empire) even they found it hard to make a worthy profit.

Yep; management these days is full of BS and self-promo. One can't do anything but laugh at these bull-shippers. Australia built a line across virgin territory for a fraction of the cost per mile. (btw look up 'w*nkword bingo)

What is wrong with a bus link ? Are you a bus snob ?

I think Stevie B is missing important points here. Firstly this isn't a "promo video" but a description of the brief history of what has happened from getting funding to end of year 1. It would only be "bullshit" if, despite the corporate management language, the facts given were incorrect. There' is no evidence to suggest this is the case here. Over 200% usage and £10m under budget is something to celebrate; a good news rail story which rarely makes the national media. As to the potshot about extending to Plymouth. These guys are the wrong target. Their remit was to deliver what is there now. Funding etc comes from the treasury and Department of Transport so if, be Stevie B, you feel strongly about that (I agree it should be) then start making your MP's life a misery over this instead of negative potshots at a success in plain sight. I know corporate bullshit when I hear it vI worked in the insurance industry for over 40 years and I have heard plenty of it from management a nd directors in that industry. The difference is they were predicting things in the future or covering up for a failed strategy not extolling a clear success as with the Okehampton reopening. I am sure the trade unions have done their very best to kill off the passenger numbers. The one disappointing thing for me is the £10 m under budget goes, presumably, back to the treasury. There is talk of as 2ne station at Okehampton as a parkway to get more car users onto the trains. The under budget should have been available to start work on this immediately. But that's our government as nd civ in l servants for me you

Apologies for the errors in my last post. I am not semi literate but possess fat fingers not designed for phone keyboards.

@@geoffj5241 😄

Unfortunately booking office staff will mostly go the way of banks and post offices in the High Street simply because fewer people use them and because there is now a better way of making the transactions. I am an avid supporter of the railways and a very regular leisure traveller but have never used a booking office in years and the overall majority of stations have never had a booking office since the 1960's. I am old enough to recall when they were first being phased out post-Beeching and Pay Trains were introduced on rural routes where stations had been de-staffed, so the proposal is nothing new. For years now I have purchased all my tickets online because its convenient, you can see the range of prices for the various times of travel and you can steer your journey through different routes to get the best deal when using split tickets. You cannot do any of this at a booking office window or when buying on the train, you have to take what is offered. As for a second member of staff on the train I assume you mean someone who will operate the doors? Why this is such a big issue for RMT when on 50% of the network the driver already operates the doors, certainly on all underground trains and the DLR has been driver-less from day one, baffles me as personally I don't see it as being a 'safety-critical' issue. I am old enough to remember the old slam-door trains when it was almost the passengers' responsibility to close the doors with the Guard there just to check, a task that is so obviously no longer necessary. There is still going to be mostly a second person on board checking tickets etc. who will have some train management responsibilities so I don't recognise a valid argument on this point. I have witnessed on many occasions this second person rushing off to operate the doors, leaving ticket sales and inspections and never reaching some passengers before they alight so revenue protection must inevitably suffer because of this. I have some sympathy for staff in their quest for a better pay increase than that which has been offered so far, but I rather think that they have have chosen to die on too many hills and just like bank and Post Office staff they cannot halt advances in technology and changes in the way transactions take place. I personally do not believe it should be the role of any union to try and save every current job, they can't and never have been able to in any industry in the past, because it eventually puts all jobs at risk and they are then fighting a political battle in the industrial arena. It should be the role of a union to achieve the best possible deal from the resources that may be available so a little more pro-action and a little less reaction in the collective mentality of some unions would not go amiss, IMO.

@@chriscrew6541 At my local station, replete with ticket issuing machines and where you can collect on-line booked tickets there is always a queue for the booking office. So there is a demand in leafy Berkshire, particularly amongst the older age groups. And, having been on late night trains out of Reading where the drunken behaviour is a threat to passengers, the absence of a guard is a safety issue. All that Great Western can offer is pleas from the driver over the loudspeaker to "please be considerate to other passengers". The railways are there to meet the public's needs, but the priorities are rather different.

​@@MrDavil43 I don't think anyone is suggesting that there will not be tickets and information available at major railway stations and termini just that staff may have to be deployed more efficiently than some are now. Most ticket offices at lesser stations in my area in the East Midlands are closed most of the time in any event and have ticket machines in my experience. It would somewhat patronising to suggest that those of my age group, i.e. 70+, and of average intelligence cannot cope with, or do not want, the introduction of new technology. I would suggest those that do reject new technology are a fast diminishing cohort in any event. I have no idea what the behaviour is on trains in the Berkshire area but whatever it happens to be on-board train staff are not security guards and could not deal with violence or unruly behaviour especially if they are at the rear of a train operating doors. The point I was trying to make was that it is the responsibility of management in any business or industry to try to anticipate future trends and plan accordingly. Similarly, the unions would surely be serving their members' interests more productively if they did likewise instead of pretending they can preserve every outmoded task and protect every job in perpetuity, or at least they give the very strong impression that is what they are trying to do. By negotiating redeployment, retraining or generous redundancy packages where this is not possible or un-acceptable to an individual member would surely be better than losing their membership thousands of pounds in lost earnings through what could prove ultimately to be futile industrial action.

@@chriscrew6541 I really do wish people would avoid statements like "the overall majority of stations have never had a booking office since the 1960s". In _your_ area maybe! Hard to take seriously a comment with a ridiculous assertion like that. I live a 20-minute train journey from London Cannon St and commuted for 20+ years into central London. (I work locally now.) I can assure you that my local stations still have people buying tickets from the person at the ticket window whenever I pass through. We use a mix of online - where appropriate - and in-person booking, depending on the type of journey. Generalisations - inaccurate ones - are so unhelpful. I find our local station staff very helpful with information and discounts etc - we have often come away with better deals than expected. BTW I am perfectly good at buying tickets and comparing prices online - it's a case of horses for courses.

@@sarac.3259 I hardly think it's a ridiculous statement because it is a hard fact that the majority of country's stations have been un-staffed for many years and I think where there is a business case to be made for a booking office to be kept open, then it will not close. London may be the centre of your world but it's not the whole country and I know, whatever people down in the south east think about their rail service, from further north it looks excellent. The nearest station to me (7-miles away and no bus services to get there either) has a train in each direction once every two hours, and we only just got a ticket machine installed before Christmas, you either booked online or paid on the train if the conductor ever got to you in time. This is the reality for many of us who live north of Watford, who for forty years also had to endure the appalling Pacer trains which were the railway equivalent of the Sinclair C5!