Great Western Coffee Shop

Posting this on "Shorter Journeys in Devon" because it starts with the contaction of the Withered Arm


Via Cornish Times (https://www.cornish-times.co.uk/news/the-fall-and-rise-of-okehampton-devons-sleeping-railway-station-603517)



Take a look also at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUHUwSGN7rA

Very interesting from a programme of 1969, five years into a Labour government who's priorities at the time was the balance of payments and exports, even creeping into popular spy series Danger Man.
Canals had a heyday of fifty years until the railways killed them off. Rail, 100years? before motorways killed off freight. Freight is only suitable for really long distances.
Passenger service suffered from the car when you could park in the cities but now with flight from the big cities to the countryside and shire towns greater than ever a demand for reintroduced trains from place like Okehampton was probably inevitable.

The area I know Torbay suffered overnight 5000 well paid jobs lost when Nortel closed. One solution was the Kingskerswell by-pass to bring jobs to the area but it had the reverse effect allowing people to commute to Exeter where the jobs are. A by-product for railways is the increased commuter traffic between Paignton and Exeter. There was always commuter traffic between Exmouth and Exeter.

That's said of the A55 along the North Wales Coast - intended to boost the economy of the coast, dualling the A55 had the reverse effect and allowed said economy to relocate to Chester.

Mark