Full steam ahead on Devon's new station

Travel boom spurs rail expansion

Work has begun on a new railway station on the edge of Okehampton which could pave the way for freight services to return to the town.

The £15 million Okehampton Interchange will take just over a year to construct and will be the newest addition to the Dartmoor Line that runs between the town and Exeter St David’s.

Regular passenger services returned in 2021 after a gap of nearly 50 years. In its first year, 250,000 people travelled on the line.

The new station at Okehampton Business Park, funded by the government with contributions from Devon County Council and West Devon Borough Council, will be in addition to the town’s existing railway station which has limited parking.

A 200-space car park will be provided at Okehampton Interchange and motorists will be able to get easy access from the A30 and avoid the town centre.

The station is expected to attract more passengers from a wide area including Torridge and North Cornwall, boost the local economy and improve the environment. It could also pave the way for freight services.

Network Rail’s industry programme director Bogdan Lupu hinted at this during this week’s turf cutting event.

“This station is going to be significant to the community, another project on this line which will develop it further,” he said. “There are future plans as we are working with some of the parties around freight introduction, but that is to be discussed in the future.”

Freight services from the nearby Meldon Quarry were withdrawn in 2011 after the quarry was mothballed. The granite site, two miles from the town, used to supply railway ballast and in the late 1800s provided the majority of the track ballast requirements of the London and South Western Railway.

Councillors, together with representatives from GWR, Network Rail and its contractor Octavius, gathered at the site of the new station on Wednesday (26 February) to watch Devon County Council chairman John Hart (Con, Bickleigh and Wembury) and West Devon Borough Council leader Mandy Ewings (Ind, Tavistock South West) cut the turf.

Cllr Hart said since passenger services had returned between Exeter and Okehampton, the first of the Conservative government’s Restoring Your Railways projects under Boris Johnson, it had opened up Dartmoor in a way no one had envisaged.

Four times more people use the service than anticipated, a number which is still growing.

“They are now talking about putting a third carriage on journeys because it is overloaded at times,” he said.

Mr Hart said Okehampton had the advantage that the line was already there, and so reintroducing passenger services had been easier than other rail projects elsewhere, where there is no existing line.

He said the government had to realise that the “road network can’t cope” in future.

Cllr Mandy Ewings said the new station and line opened opportunities for people to travel to Exeter for work and university, with students able to continue living at home.

“This will make an incredible difference to young people and their families. It makes university more reachable, it’s so important to our future generations.”

West Devon Borough Council’s lead member for economy Cllr Neil Jory (Con, Milton Ford) said Okehampton is in a good place to attract more quality businesses to the area.

The government is expected to announce at the end of March whether the reinstatement of the Tavistock to Plymouth line would be part of a future funding plan.

If this goes ahead, campaigners will turn their attention to the reinstatement of the Tavistock to Okehampton section of line, which would create an alternative route from Plymouth to Exeter, avoiding the south Devon coast at Dawlish where the line fell into the sea in storms in 2014.