KT Long Read: Reviving the romance of railways in Britain

The atmosphere was akin to a rock concert, but it was early morning and the air was crisp. A brass band and jazz singers joined hundreds of families, railway enthusiasts, campaigners and hikers at the Okehampton station last Saturday in Devon, south-west England. Many fist-pumped the air amidst the noise and music as the train to Exeter rolled off the tracks at 6.32am, the first time since the service was withdrawn in 1972 as part of swinging cuts to make Britain’s railways profitable. Some elderly local residents were emotional, long unsure if railways would return in their lifetime. The route connects Exeter St Davids, Exeter Central, Crediton and Okehampton, providing a launchpad for visitors to explore the Dartmoor National Park and regional links for local commuters. The reopening of the route is expected to boost businesses, tourism, and provide greater access to education and work for thousands of people who live locally. Called the Dartmoor Line, it was the first track reopened as part of the  £500 million Restoring Your Railways programme launched in January 2020.

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Says Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, who travelled on one of its first services: “By restoring the Dartmoor Line, we are undoing 50 years of damage, reconnecting a community, and creating new opportunities for jobs, tourism, education and recreation. The passion, nostalgia and enthusiasm for that ambition is clear right across the country. People love their railways and rightly miss them when they’re gone. Today — ahead of time and under budget — we’ve made a decisive step in fixing that, cutting the ribbon on a line and making a real difference to people’s lives.” Work on the 24-mile stretch of mothballed track included laying 11 miles of new lines, installing 24,000 concrete sleepers and 29,000 tonnes of ballast in a record-breaking 20-day period. Repairs were made to 21 structures along the route, including four bridges, while overgrown vegetation on the tracks was cleared throughout. The nearly derelict Okehampton station was also given another life with new information screens, ticket vending machines and a waiting room. The line is a boon for hikers, walkers, cyclists and others, since Dartmoor is the only area in England that currently explicitly permits wild camping.

The fate of the Dartmoor Line is closely connected with the history of railways in Britain (the Okehampton station first opened in 1871). Using rail tracks as modes of transport originated in Greece and Germany, but it was the development of steam locomotive in Britain in 1802 that marked the beginning and development of modern rail transport. The first rail line connecting British cities, running between Liverpool and Manchester, opened in 1830; others soon followed: London-Birmingham opened in 1838, London-Bristol in 1841, and London-Glasgow in 1848. By 1850, over 6,000 miles of track were laid. By the 1840s, a railway network had evolved, run by several private companies. The 1860s saw a second boom, and by 1880 there were about 18,000 miles of track and a web of connections across the country. The network run by the companies was brought under government control during World War I, and, in 1923, some of the companies were merged and all were grouped under the ‘Big Four’ joint-stock companies: the London and North Eastern Railway, the London Midland and Scottish Railway, the Southern Railway and the Great Western Railway.

The railway network

The four companies ran the network until December 1947, but were nationalised to form British Railways during the tenure of Clement Attlee’s Labour government in 1948. For about a decade, the nationalised network made profits due to increasing usage, but passenger numbers dwindled from the late 1950s, prompting a landmark review in the early 1960s that had a major impact on its future, including on the Dartmoor Line. The review was led by physicist and engineer Richard Beeching, who was briefly chairman of British Railways. He produced his seminal report in 1963, The Reshaping of British Railways, recommending the closure of nearly 2,500 stations and cutting passenger services from nearly 5,000 miles of track to ensure the network’s profitability. Many branch and main lines, and small stations, were shut down in the 1960s under what came to be known as the Beeching Axe. Many communities still remain isolated from the rail network following the closure of their local railway line or station more than five decades ago.

Says Prime Minister Boris Johnson: “Improving transport links is essential to levelling up and spreading opportunity across the country, which is why we are driving forward our pledge to reverse the Beeching cuts in Devon. As we reopen the Dartmoor Line, we are rightly reconnecting communities, giving passengers the chance to choose rail over the road and travel from Exeter to Okehampton on greener, cleaner modes of transport.” Adds Shapps: “We have made it our mission to reverse cuts made in the Beeching era of the 1960s. Many communities still live with the scars that came from the closure of their local railway. Investing in transport links ensures our regions are better connected, local economies flourish and more than half a century of isolation is undone.”

Today, the thousands of miles of railways axed under the Beeching cuts are in various stages of disuse and repair. Some still maintain freight services, some sit unused and overgrown whilst others have been built over or converted to cycle routes or pathways. Besides the Restoring Your Railway programme, a New Stations Fund helps to develop new stations (so far 10 brand new stations have been opened in England and Wales) because not all growing towns can re-open previously existing stations and some areas may never have been served by rail. Besides the Darmoor Line, 38 proposals to reopen similar lines and stations have received funding and are in various stages of restoration.

The excitement and passion in Okehampton on the day was a reflection of the fact that railways have always been much more than just connecting and transporting people and goods from A to B. Trains, tracks and railway platforms have long inspired iconic literature. They are symbols or themes in many great novels; as places where people accidentally meet, only to later go their separate ways, where people find the time to ruminate, relax or write. Novelist Andrew Martin, son of a railwayman, writes in The Guardian: “I spent a lot of time daydreaming on trains, and hence my series of historical thrillers featuring the Edwardian railwayman, Jim Stringer…I think my love of reading about trains comes from Sherlock Holmes stories, which often begin with a dash to the station (Holmes and Watson leave from every London terminus except Marylebone). The appeal of railway literature lies in what Proust once identified as the compelling melancholia of trains, each journey being a leap into the unknown.”