Have you got the maps from the Beeching Report mirrored anywhere? Nigh impossible to make out anything on the A5 reprint, not to mention the annotations on the copy they used.

I wonder if there is a large enough potential passenger count to justify rebuilding the section of railway between Colyton & Seaton Junction as an extension of the Seaton Tramway. Aerial mapping seems to show a largely unobstructed trackbed.

Good wonder.  It leads to questions about who the customers would be.

Would it be the current customer base which I believe is largely day return leisure trips, would they pay the extra and / or want the longer journey and would the Colyton Stations facilities be redundant?

Would extra traffic arrive by train and would Seaton Junction station re-open?  If that extra traffic arrived, would there be enough capacity along the tramway to cope?

What other traffic would there be / is there?  I am aware of camping sites that have been served in the past with late trams getting campers hone from the Seaton pubs.  Would traffic be generated for the none-motoring holiday maker?

General traffic and would a tram service usefully run all day, every day, all year?  Would it abstract from the bus?

I’m not sure there’s a great deal of logic to what survived and what didn’t. In Bristol only two suburban stations were to be retained post Reshaping - Stapleton Road, and St Anne’s Park. In the end the Severn Beach line survived but St Anne’s Park didn’t. Stapleton Road’s role as an important interchange was largely usurped by Bristol Parkway, and it is now only served by local trains.

Meanwhile what would now be a very useful main line via Fishponds to Yate and Gloucester is a linear park. It’s all a bit random really.

The "was Beeching right" argument is one that has brought animated and heated discussions for many fora!

I look at the maps, at the lines proposed for closure that survived and the lines to be kept that closed and it's surprising that there's quite a few in both categories.

In my personal view, there were some crazy suggestions that (thank goodness) failed to go through as Liverpool Exchange to Southport and some which happened and are so sorely missed these days like Oxford to Cambridge. But overall some pruning, regrettably, made sense.   I may get myself into hot waters if I suggest that two stations in Bodmin - North and General looks like overprovision, and I can understand that Tavistock does not need two railways from Plymouth but for goodness sake in should have been left with one. Halwill Junction to(wards) Torrington is another example that I suspect may have been overdue for closure - but onwards closure to Barnstaple Junction was two steps too far.  And in each of these examples I am happy to be argued against (or to have things explained to me with a local knowledge I don't have).

There are, or were, a few baffling survivors. In almost every case, they baffle less these days; so much of that comes down to the hard work of ACoRP^▸ (Association of Community Rail Partnerships) and Community Rail Partnerships.  And some really sad losses - I suspect that if Bridport had survived just a few years longer, it would survive to this day, to the economic benefit of Bridport.

Not sure how the levels work for Bodmin - yes, the place really needed one station and a Bridgnorth-style tunnel beneath the town, though possibly not with a Bridgnorth-style construction shaft emerging in the town centre to build it, 'cos that was just mean.

Mark

The Southport proposal resulted in the chopping of a well used and popular electric extension of the Merseyrail system to Crossens. I knew locals in that town who couldn't believe that their service would be just ripped away.

The very popular South Wales resort of Porthcawl lost its railway because of low passenger receipts from that town. The truth being that all of the traffic supporting the railway was coming into the town.