Okehampton

[whole diary]

[stuving]

A press release from Network Rail:

Dartmoor Line set for upgrade work in preparation for start of hourly services

Network Rail is set to begin 15 days of engineering upgrades on the Dartmoor Line in preparation for the introduction of hourly services.

Next week, from Monday 25 April until the early hours of Tuesday 10 May, Network Rail engineers will be upgrading parts of the 14-mile stretch of Dartmoor Line which currently carries two-hourly Great Western Railway (GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway)) passenger services between Okehampton and Exeter.

Along the Dartmoor Line, at Fatherford and Coleford, engineers will be further improving the drainage and track bed to enable faster line speeds ready for the increase to hourly services from mid-May.

These latest upgrades form part of the second stage of the Dartmoor Line reopening, building upon the reintroduction of regular passenger services last year to now delivering an hourly service.

While this engineering work is ongoing, a reduced train service will continue to operate between Exeter and Crediton with a rail replacement bus service in operation between Crediton and Okehampton. Trains services on the Tarka^▸ (Line from Barnstaple to Exeter) Line between Exeter and Barnstaple will continue to run as usual. Two-hourly train services to Okehampton will resume from Tuesday 10 May, with hourly services starting from Sunday 15 May...

[GBM]

Why couldn't this have been done before the line was opened?

[ellendune]

Why couldn't this have been done before the line was opened?

Because then it might never have reopened?

[infoman]

Small item at the end of the local news on the works, on BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page) spotlight news at 06:25am on Thursday.

[REVUpminster]

https://twitter.com/networkrailwest

Puzzle?? Renewing track and drainage in the Fatherford area; I thought this had been done in the recent record breaking track renewal.

This answers my own question.

https://www.dartmoor-railway-association.org/comingsgoings

Don't think this will be ever double track again.

[Mark A]

https://twitter.com/networkrailwest

Puzzle?? Renewing track and drainage in the Fatherford area; I thought this had been done in the recent record breaking track renewal.

Awkward that track laid in 2021 has had to be lifted and relayed just a year later.

Off-topic: the Borders Railway. Here's a Google Streetview from 2011, south through Tynehead cutting, on the final few miles of the climb to the summit at Falahill. The trackbed then, a lake or a swamp - in both directions. A current view would show that the out-of-use old bridge is now gone, having been replaced with a new structure on the alignment of the embankment that then held water in that pond in the cutting. Down on the trackbed, the railway is back, and is double track at this point as it's within one of the line's dynamic loops - which ends on the far side of the bridge in the far distance, which is at the site of Tynehead Station in the far distance.

https://www.google.com/maps/@55.8276166,-2.9733668,3a,75y,139.89h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sMzbk6jeUNG3qRSUDr2iM-Q!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DMzbk6jeUNG3qRSUDr2iM-Q%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D154.67532%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656!5m1!1e1

[TonyK]

Awkward that track laid in 2021 has had to be lifted and relayed just a year later.

I thought this was always the plan. I don't know why it wasn't all done at once, but someone will.

[infoman]

Rail Minister Wendy Morton was at Okehampton on Thursday,featured on BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page) spotlight local news for the South West.

[RichardB]

Hourly service launched today - my colleague Mike, who lives not far from Okehampton, popped down to the station to film the first train arriving.

Reasonable number of people waiting for it.

https://fb.watch/d0uM4bkOUL/

[Pb_devon]

From the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page) Devon news today:

The number of passengers using a reopened rail service in Devon, which had been shut for nearly 50 years, is about double what was expected, according to train operator GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway).
The Dartmoor Line between Okehampton and Exeter reopened in November 2021 with regular services for the first time in 49 years.
GWR said more than 120,000 journeys had been made……….

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-62736152

[grahame]

The number of passengers using a reopened rail service in Devon, which had been shut for nearly 50 years, is about double what was expected, according to train operator GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway).

Excellent - though of course it depends on who's expectations we're talking about.   For many, this great success was fully anticipated - and saying that is not to lessen the achievement.

[Mark A]

120000 journeys, 300 days, 30 services per day - roughly 13 passengers per service?

Mark

[grahame]

120000 journeys, 300 days, 30 services per day - roughly 13 passengers per service?

Mark

Didn't it start at two-hourly so half that number of services, and wasn't there a significant closure even when it had been opened?  I suspect numbers are more like double your estimate ... which as an average is not bad; there are going to be a couple of contraflow lemons like the early morning train off Exeter and that last one in at night.   No passengers realise the lemons exist, exactly because there are no passengers there to realise!

[Mark A]

Apologies that that post unintentionally came across as more than a little 'DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) in Trowbridge' mode - I fess up to having the regular counts of 30ish passengers per carriage on the Waterloos.

Okehampton's return to the network is really good news as is achieving those figures in the opening year: it'll be good to see an in-depth and informative analysis of who is travelling, to and from where, and also e.g. how people travel to Okehampton's suboptimally-situated station. Looking forward to the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) finding its feet on the benefits of through routes more generally, and this one in particular.

Mark

[johnneyw]

The number of passengers using a reopened rail service in Devon, which had been shut for nearly 50 years, is about double what was expected, according to train operator GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway).

Excellent - though of course it depends on who's expectations we're talking about.   For many, this great success was fully anticipated - and saying that is not to lessen the achievement.

Yes definitely and this reminds me that it has often been found that usage prediction models used by those involved in assessing a railway's viability still tend to underestimate (sometimes seriously) the actual take up.
I'm not aware of any resource that records and quantifies these discrepancies or if there is now an admission that these predictive models need looking at again but perhaps I'm a bit behind where the current best practices actually are these days.