Great Western Coffee Shop

"Train services at Coombe are being disrupted due to safety checks being made in the Coombe station area.Short notice cancellations can be expected. Trains are unable to call at Coombe station. Replacement road transport will be available."

Seems to have been on the general alerts all day - any idea what's up?

apparently the platform has dissapeared into the old canal..... but that is third hand information, wouldn't have though too many people will be inconvenienced though! I've never seen a passenger actually get on or off there!

Isn't Coombe in Oxfordshire? Or is the problem at Coombe Junction?

It's the back of the top (Moorswater) end of the platform that has fallen away.  The rest of the platform (and all of the platform as it meets the track) is fine.  Hopefully an arrangement can be found where those few people boarding/alighting do so from the door at the south (Looe) end of the train.

We're talking Coombe Junction, Cornwall, by the way.   

I have witnessed two people on seperate occassions use coombe junction in all my trips on the looe line I feel privliged!

Cheers for the info though its been really bugging me what the problem with the station was as its constantly appearing on fgw website.

Wonder how replacement services are operating??  Are they sending a taxi for everytime a train is due!  This would be a very expensive cost for absolutly no passengers!! Maybe i should try going to coombe junction and see what happens!! Will i end up at st keyne and have a taxi from st keyne to coombe !!

the Coombe in oxfordshire is spelled combe I think?

Is there any way of removing the need to reverse at Coombe?

The halt is quite pointless, apart from taking people up a hill.

What is the price of an off peak single Coombe to Liskard?

Most trains stop short of Coombe, though still need to reverse.

Hopefully one day the Moorswater P&R will materialise, at which point it would make sense to give Coombe the decent burial it deserves (as opposed to slipping away, bit by bit).

Quite right, vacman: http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/stations/CME.html, as opposed to http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/stations/coe/details.html

 ;) :D ;D

Our own comparator (visible only if you're signed in ...) showing nearby stations, passenger counts and similarly used stations:

http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/smr/COE.html
http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/smr/CME.html

Gosh!  32 passengers at Coombe, 2006/07 ???????????????  ;D

And the service they are provided with runs to 3 trains a day each way to and from Liskeard.

Which is more than we get at Melksham.

I can only imagine there's someone on the Board of FGW lives down that way?

Ah, thanks. It doesn't help that in these parts when someone says 'Combe' they mean Ilfracombe!

We used to refer to Combe Martin as "Combe" when I lived further up the coast in Parracombe - it's a confusing part of the world in some ways!

Not really, it's no real feat for the Looe trains to continue up to Coombe hence the three trains that continue up to there, you can probably walk from Coombe to Liskeard as quick as the train! It is a pointless station though!

The "three trains each way" is the current service, but in the year in question we had the big change (December '06) ... how many trains were there prior to that?

Continuing your comparison, Phil, Melksham had 22000 rather that 32 passengers that year, with a service that was dropped from 5 trains each way to 2.

There were 2 trains prior to "12/06", one thing to point out though, Coombe really is THE most pointless station in the UK, it was only ever built as a platform to "change ends" in steam days and it serves nothing! there's not even any road access!

It's brilliant, vacman!

See http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/stations/coe/localarea.html


 ;D ;D ;D

I note the "service disruption" has gone from the FGW front page, and the National Rail site has just regular station details. Is Coombe back in service with trains calling again, 3 times a day, each way?

Yes.  Small part of the platform is now available for use.  Passengers must alight from the front of the train and only one door is opened.

Puts me in mind of Berney Arms on the Reedham route of the  Norwich-Yarmouth line. Nearest road is 2 miles away.

http://www.berneyarms.co.uk/html/berneyarms/railway/berney_railway1.htm

Yes but how far to the Nearest Pub?? :P :P

It's a remote Station, but so is the Pub which gets it's beer by boat I believe.

The platform at Coombe was built as the freight transfer point between the Liskeard & Caradon Railway (bringing ore from the Cheesewring area) and the Looe & Liskeard Canal but in 1860 the Railway was extended to Looe, the railway built in many places on top of the canal.
1^st January 1916 the Railway north of Moorswater was abandoned.

What Coombe should be is the reversal point of all Liskeard-Looe Trains with points & signals operated remotely by Liskeard Box instead of all the time wasted by train crew operating points at coombe and then locking the Looe train onto the Looe branch and setting the point to Looe against the train.

A regular Hourly service could run calling at all stations in the summer but for the hastle of coombe operations.

A regular hourlyclockface timetable was trialled on the line a couple of years ago and the operational timings worked fine, problem was that being clockface it didn't connect into or out of anything with branch trains leaving 2 mins before mainline trains arrived etc, fine on linse such as St Ives where the service is half hourly but when you have to wait 57 minutes in the cold then you'll find other arrangements! the service is now near hourly but connects quite well with mainline trains. that said, it would save a lot of arseing about if the points were controlled from Liskeard box but at the time of rationalisation - the closure of Coombe box - it was far cheaper to retain token instruments and "Stop boards", who know's, it may have been this cost saving that actually prevented the branch from closing??? I spose we'll never know, but Looe is one of those lines that makes you wonder why Beeching didn't get his way and close it as it's never busy, even in summer it's quite compared to other Cornish branches but thank goodness it is still here for us to enjoy!

I've seen it on a few summer weekdays rammed from end to end to match the worst of Bristol commuting (except more pushcairs and distressed children), so it can get quite busy in the school holidays.

Both St Ives & Looe Branches came within Days of Closure, but the New Labour Government elected with a New Plan for Railways saved the day when Babs Castle MP announced that BOTH branches were saved.

Nothing to do with the fact that same MP had holiday home in St Ives or Looe?

As a small point in the VERY same speech the Death Sentence was passed on the Bodmin Road-Bodmin-Wadebridge-Padstow line.

Now that's a line that should never have gone?

Trains to Padstow on May 1^st would be meggar busy.

Probably, but keeping a line open for one day a year??????? The Looe branch can be rammed in summer, but lets remember that it's only about two morning trains down and two afternoon trips back up that are like that and it's usually only a single 153 so around 100 pax on each of those trains, compare to Falmouth 2 cars full and standing going up between 0700 and 1300 and full and standing going down between 1600 and 1900 and pretty damn full in between, or St Ives a 4 car full and standing between 1000 and 1400 going down and 1400 and 2000 coming back!

I never said it was for One day a year, I've been wisely informed the Branch into Wadebridge was reasonable used even if the BRB did try to make the service unuseable in the 1960's. Bodmin is about the Biggest town in Cornwall, Wadebridge isn't small, and to run the extra few miles to Padstow, well it should never have shut.
 Padstow deserves a Rail service just as much as St Ives.

Does St Ives merit a service in the Winter months yet it gets a Train every 1/2 hour.

I'm not saying Padstow shouldn't have a rail service, but it probably comes to running cost's aswell, St Ives is a relatively low cost line, only 30mph max speed, does't interfere with the main line, could you really imagine St Ives these days in summer without the railway? the place would have choked!

Just like Padstow in the summer, CHOKED

WikiPedia says "citation needed" about the incident ... if any of our members is a Wikipedia contributor, could they add in a link to this page ;-) ... Thanks

Forum posts are often not considered reliable sources on wikipedia.

Fair enough ... I'm not a wikipedia expert ... thanks for that

On the other hand, we've had our moments of glory: see reference 1, quoted at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashchurch_for_Tewkesbury_railway_station#References, for example!  ;)

The real trick is to post fake information onto Wikipedia and get it picked up by a lazy journo looking to fill some space in his newspaper, as the subsequent newspaper article can then be referenced in order to confirm its veracity...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/17/wikipedia_and_the_mirror/ (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/17/wikipedia_and_the_mirror/)