A century ago, Britain's rail network was the envy of the world.
You could get a train from almost anywhere...
..to almost anywhere else.
But many of these lines were considered unprofitable,
and in the 1960s,
Dr Beeching was recruited by the government to come up with a plan
that would stop the railways from haemorrhaging money.
He famously brought the axe down on over 4,000 miles of track,
and 2,000 stations.
Almost overnight, 30% of the network was closed down.
50 years on, I'm going on a journey
to discover just a few of those lost lines.
This time, I'm in Devon,
walking the lost railway between Plymouth and Exeter, via Dartmoor.
It's a 50-mile journey in total.
A train still runs from Plymouth to Bere Alston,
but from Bere Alston onwards,
this goods and passenger railway is lost for 18 miles,
almost to Oakhampton.
The line started in Plymouth,
one of the most historic ports on the south coast.
It ran through the fertile farmlands in the heartland of West Devon...
..and across a unique iron viaduct, with a 150ft drop.
Ah! I'm not going to let go!
I'll see first-hand where the very best railway ballast came from.
I want to understand why so many people
want to bring this lost railway back to life,
and how they've already succeeded
in restoring the rest of the line to Exeter.
One of the biggest challenges walking lost railways
can be getting started,
finding the exact point where the old track bed begins.
They can be completely overgrown
and sometimes have been built right on top of.
Once you find it, you're well away,
especially if you've got an old map that shows you the exact route,
where the old railway used to go.
And that's why I've come here.
I'm looking for the garage that belongs to house number six.
And here it is.
And it's in here that I'm hoping to find my start point for the journey
walking the lost section of the London and South Western railway.
Hello!
Hello! Is it Bruce? Good afternoon! It is!
Nice to see you. nice to see you. Come on in.
Thank you very much! Look at this.
Thanks, Bruce! Oh!
It's amazing!
Bruce is a model railway enthusiast.
I'm hoping to find some clues as to where to start my journey
amongst his meticulous scale model of Bere Alston station.
What I am trying to do is walk the route that the old line took.
And the tricky thing for me is finding the point where today's
railway stops and the lost railway that's no longer there begins.
Right! And it's not always easy, because you're trying to find
the start point of something that's no longer there any more. Yep.
The first thing Bruce does is emulate the train
I'll be coming in on from Plymouth, which still runs to this day.
This could be you from your train from Plymouth. Excellent!
The train journey from Plymouth to Bere Alston is about eight miles.
When you arrive on the train at Bere Alston,
you need to head that way, just as the little chappie here will.
Fantastic, Bruce!
Have you made this especially? He was made over the weekend.
ROB CHUCKLES
And once you get to the end,
if you down the ramp and along the track for about 200m...
..and then you'll come to a dead end,
and carry on just walking all the way to Oakhampton for you.
So, Bruce has given me an idea of where I need to head.
Now, I need to do it for real.
I'm just off the train from Plymouth,
and I'm here at the real Bere Alston Station,
and this is as far as the train comes in this direction these days.
But having spoken with Bruce,
and seeing all this on a miniature scale,
I'm pretty confident I know where the old track bed runs -
it's this way.
Ah! Huh.
A bit stuck here.
Well, that's obviously good to see,
railway infrastructure,
but this fence is not what I wanted to find here.
And that's obviously overgrown, so the track went on through there.
That's all overgrown now.
But this fence is blocking me through here.
That big bank means I can't go up that side.
That fence goes all the way to the bank over there.
I can't get through here, and you can't just go climbing over fences.
OK. Let's have a rethink.
Erm... If I want to keep following the line
on a roughly northerly direction through here,
but because of this obstruction,
I think I might have to take a bit of a detour.
That's all right!
This is all part of the adventure, with walking these lost railways.
This is, in its very nature, it's partly lost.
My job is to try and find it again.
So, I'm thinking if I head back out from the station
and try and find some roads which may cross the line.
So, here we are.
Where am I? Yeah, here we are.
So, from Bere Alston...
Actually, that's as good. OK, this is good.
I've got a good few roads off of here
that cross and pass either under or over the railway,
so that's where I'm heading now.
Back out, and along the road.
See if I can get back on to this line.
It might not look like it,
but this is one of the most complete lost railways in the country.
Overgrown it may be, but, uniquely, all the track bed is still intact.
There are people up and down the line
campaigning for it to be reopened,
and that's because so many of the transportation needs
that motivated the building of this railway 130 years ago
still exist today.
Ha!
This is what I've been looking for.
Some brick walls along this road...
..because...
..this will be...
..a bridge over the old railway line.
If my map reading's correct, anyway.
Yes!
Ha-ha!
Look at that!
My goodness, that's a long way down.
And it's a very steep embankment.
Ha-ha!
Woohoo!
Good echo, too!
Look at this beautiful brickwork.
Ah, stunning!
So, the last bridge allowed me to go over the top of the railway.
This one allows me to come underneath it.
So, they're different in that respect,
but I'm worried they might be the same
in that I cannot get up on to the railway still.
Looking for a nice, easy way up
back on to the line.
I say, "back on." I've hardly been on it yet.
This looks like it might have been walked.
Try this.
This is definitely the easiest way up to the line or down to the line
I've had yet.
There's definitely not a proper footpath here yet.
All right! bit of a track.
See how we go.
Glad I've got trousers on, there's a lot of stinging nettles here.
Hard going though it is, I'm finally on the track bed.
Ouch!
And with 17 miles to go, who knows where this will lead me?
I'm going to discover the reason why Dartmoor's rabbits
were such frequent railway passengers.
That's put a whole new bent on meat pies for me.
Bring back the railways!
Bring back the rabbit!
Delicious!
I'm following the route of the London and South West Railway
from Plymouth to Exeter,
but I've barely walked a mile from where I first started
at Bere Alston.
Following the routes of long-forgotten railways
can be extremely challenging.
The lines have been closed for more than 50 years,
and if the land's been left unattended,
they can become extremely overgrown,
and, in summer, virtually impassable.
Ouch!
A couple of miles later, I've been forced back on the road.
Sadly, not every viaduct is safe to walk on,
but by keeping sight of the lost line,
at least I can see I'm heading in the right direction.
A thickly wooded avenue of trees conveys the lost railway
into the town of Tavistock, and, for the first time on this journey,
I can easily walk the track bed
thanks to a public walkway across the great Tavistock Viaduct.
It breathes life back into this gigantic structure.
Imagine people's excitement when steam trains first ran across
this railway in the sky,
towering as it does above the ancient streets below.
Tavistock is the birthplace of Francis Drake -
the man who was playing bowls when the Spanish Armada
was spotted coming up the English Channel.
Surrounded by rich farmland,
it's always been an important market town.
Lavish buildings like the town hall are also a reminder
that by the 19th century,
it became extremely wealthy from the proceeds of a nearby copper mine.
For all these reasons, and more,
Tavistock was a perfect candidate for the railway,
and still would be today.
But I've stepped off the line and into the centre of town
to try and sample one of Dartmoor's delicacies.
In the heyday of the railways,
rabbit was an extremely popular and abundant meat.
Dartmoor was full of them, both wild and farmed.
The "warrening industry," as it was known,
offered a cheaper alternative to other meats.
It's been calculated that, from a station nearby,
at one point there were more dead rabbits travelling on trains
to London than there were people.
And I'm hoping some of that rabbit's still available,
because I'm keen to try it out.
Palmer's butchers have been in business since 1962,
six years before the railway was closed,
so, they should know a thing or two about rabbits.
Hello! Hello, Rob! Is it Duncan?
Hiya! Nice to meet you. Very nice to meet you!
And you! Good! Good to see you.
This is lovely, all this, Duncan. Thank you very much.
I tell you what, there is a question that I need to ask you first up.
Do you still serve rabbit?
We do, definitely. You do?
Yep, all year round. Lovely!
Is it still a popular meat in these parts?
Is rabbit still in demand in Dartmoor? Very popular.
When we can get it fresh, then we sell it in the counter,
but this time of year we sell it frozen.
Always keep it frozen. So, yeah.
Have you got any around to see? Have you got any here?
Yeah, let me go and get a couple for you.
Yeah, let's have a look.
There.
Oh, here we go! That is a frozen whole rabbit.
This is a whole rabbit? That's the whole rabbit.
And people still come in today and will ask for rabbit meat?
Yep, they do, yep.
It's normally the older generation that buy it.
Why do you think that is?
Well, I think if you go back to World War II,
where meat was scarce, rabbit wasn't.
And how are they served up today?
How do you tend to serve them today?
If you come up this way, I have rabbit pies.
They look very tempting.
And it is about the time of day where I am getting a bit peckish.
Would I be able to sample one? Of course you can.
I would love to! Yeah, no problem at all.
Thank you very much. Let me get one.
Pies are my weakness, and these look delicious.
Oh, Duncan, that's cracking.
That's put a whole new bent on meat pies for me.
Bring back the railways! Bring back the rabbit!
Delicious!
After Tavistock, the lost railway line hugs the western edge
of Dartmoor all the way to Okehampton.
I've come up to take a peek at this glorious wilderness.
Rabbits still thrive here, although not in the numbers they used to.
Too high for the railways, and, indeed, for most of the population,
just 33,000 people live amongst this rugged landscape,
yet it covers an area eight times the size of Manchester.
Strong winds, acidic soils and an abundance of granite outcrops
mean that Dartmoor has remained largely untamed and untouched.
The next station on the lost line is Brentor,
a village topped by a curious rocky outcrop.
It's back down the hill to the track bed and civilisation for me.
Trains don't like hills.
I'm back on the road again.
This is all private land around here to actually walk the line,
but I'm expecting to cross the line on this road here very soon.
Actually, right where the station was.
And this is actually called "Station Road,"
so it should be around here somewhere.
Hang on.
I caught this out of the corner of my eye.
Right. well, that's definitely a station.
That almost still looks like it's open.
Oh, let's go and have a look, see what's down here.
Interesting facts for you, whilst we're here.
Station Road is actually the second most used road name in Britain -
the first one being "High Street".
Now, what's going on here? I mean, it's all given away here, look.
Station House. That is a station.
I don't know. Oh, yeah, we're good.
Hello, there. Hello. I'm Rob. Hello. I'm Richard. Hi, Richard.
This is, or was, Brentor station.
Until recently it was a B&B, but the new owner, Richard Meredith,
is restoring it with the kind of forensic skills
that might be applied to an old master.
Wow! Look at all this!
We're standing here.
Just underneath this canopy here.
So that building there is what you see behind you there.
Richard's station is like a period film set,
complete with old gas lamps, level crossings
and porter's trolleys loaded up with heavy luggage.
I'm not a railway enthusiast. You're not?
It's not as if I'm a trainspotter or anything like that.
Trains themselves don't actually really float my boat.
It's purely the historical aspect of it.
When we were looking to buy something,
we were looking at an old church or an old Victorian school.
Yeah. Is there something about the Victorian era
that maybe interests you, or...?
They built things to last, Rob.
Everything they did was properly engineered.
It is fantastic! You must get a huge amount of enjoyment
by having this then? Oh, yeah.
Is that what it's about? You just enjoy...
Yeah, partly. Just enjoy it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, listen to it. What can you hear? Nothing.
You know, it's just so quiet.
Yeah. And I pray, absolutely pray, that they don't open it up again.
As you're probably aware, there is...
There's quite a decent movement behind it.
Well, yeah, I know. Tell me about it.
Not everybody's campaigning to bring this line back to life,
and with everything Richard's done to restore this glorious station,
who can blame him for fearing he might lose it.
I'm taken inside to see the ticket office.
This is probably the most historical part of the whole property.
When I first came and saw the house,
this is the bit that really was, like, wow, this sells it to me.
It's fantastic. This just gets better and better. Oh, it's amazing.
Yeah. These are tickets here.
So you would... Obviously, they'd come there,
they'd say where they wanted to go.
They'd take the appropriate ticket from the box,
stamp it with the ticket machine here.
Pass it over, take the money and away they go,
Your station here is like a living museum, actually. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Richard's great western railway map reminds me that Lydford
is the next station on my lost railway route.
Known for possessing the deepest and most idyllic gorge
in the whole of the south west, the railway managed to transform
a local beauty spot into a national must-see destination.
It was the upper class escapades, 18th century tourism,
that first truly celebrated the natural beauty and mystical charm
of this spot, much of which centred around the dramatic
centrepiece of Lydford gorge - the White Lady Waterfall.
And it is a truly impressive cascade.
It's unlike anything most people would have experienced
anywhere else at the time,
but it was the arrival of the railway station in Lydford in 1874
which brought tourists here in their droves and from all walks of life.
Suddenly, day trips for the working classes,
from the likes of Exeter or Plymouth, were easy and affordable.
And you can imagine their reactions when confronted with this.
As I progress on my journey, I'm round about here,
near Lydford station.
Now, my lost railway, the London and South Western,
continues up northeast to Okehampton, but if you can see here,
there's a split and another railway heads west out through Launceston.
It's another lost railway and I'm actually on it right here now.
You can see these deep cuttings on each side of me.
Now, I'm taking this small diversion, let's call it,
west out here to a place called Lifton,
because there's a factory there
that's been in operation for over 100 years
that was only originally built there at Lifton
because of the existence of this railway.
And I've got a strong feeling
it's going take me right back to my childhood.
My Friesian friends in the field here give a bit of a clue
as to why I've taken this detour up towards Launceston.
Devon is, of course, famous for its dairy produce.
In fact, the south west of England
is home to around a third of the country's dairy cows.
But it's one product in particular that I've come to explore.
I'm on my favourite kind of road,
Station Road in the village of Lifton,
and I've come to meet Tony Symons.
Very good to meet you.
I'm finding it a little hard
to actually figure out exactly where I was.
A big clue for me was the fact that we've got Station Road along there,
that I was walking along.
But I couldn't really take the exact line of the route
because your great big factory here is in the way. Oh, right.
So the factory's been built on the route of the former railway
and we're stood on the railway at the moment.
This road is, well...
This road is the path of the original railway. It's the railway.
So, let's have a look at this.
There's the factory, and this is a level crossing.
Is that a level crossing? It looks like one to me.
That's the level crossing.
We're actually stood in front of the spot at the moment.
That's just here? Fantastic!
So, if you say, so that's heading up towards Launceston? Launceston, yes.
So, I'm coming this way from Lydford. Yeah.
So, that is where the trains would be coming in.
So, the railway went across this level crossing
and through what is now the site of a factory.
It's quite hard to imagine that now, isn't it? Certainly is, yeah.
I can now reveal that the product I've come to explore
is none other than rice pudding.
The Ambrosia factory owes its very existence to the railway.
It was built alongside Lifton Station
for the express purpose of bringing milk and rice into the factory,
and despatching cans of rice pudding out to the rest of the country.
Alfred Morris opened the factory in 1917,
52 years after the railway was first laid here.
Initially, it was used to make milk powder.
Then, just before the outbreak of the Second World War,
Morris' team invented a way of making rice pudding in a can.
Unopened, it lasted for years,
and so became a wartime staple in Red Cross parcels,
distributed to prisoner's of war all around the world.
We've got a lot of empty cans here,
but then, first things first, is rice going in, is it?
So, the rice is filled on this machine... Yeah.
..into each of the cans,
and the rice is raw at this point.
And this is the quantity of rice that goes into each can.
Hey, hey!
The process is fascinating to follow.
A milk and sugar solution is added to the rice,
and the can is then sealed.
We don't want anything getting in or out of the can,
because we're going to use the can,
if you like, as a small pressure cooker
to cook and sterilise the product
and kill all the bacteria.
The contents are cooked inside the can in massive ovens,
then cooled and cooked again.
Only then do they become genuine, canned rice pudding,
ready to eat.
Luckily for me, every batch of rice pudding
is tested and tasted for quality control,
and I'm available.
Well, I'm staring looking at it. I think we've just got to
get in there, haven't we? Shall we just dig in? Yeah. Dig in!
Lovely!
Now, I... A lot of people have their rice pudding hot.
I... I enjoy my rice pudding cold, I have to say.
For me, it feels like tasting it pure.
Tasting it pure.
Can I...? Can I get in?
I'm really excited about this.
That tastes pretty good to me, Tony.
I'm going to discover how the railway made it up
onto the high moor...
Ohh! Here we are! Ha-ha!
We've got ourselves some railway track!
..and how it helped improved the army's target practice
into the bog.
It's got a kick like a mule.
WHISTLE BLOWS
I'm following the route of the London and South West Railway
from Plymouth to Exeter,
and I'm now 23 miles into my journey.
HE GRUNTS It is hard going through here.
Thankfully, for me, things are about to get a lot easier,
cos I've just arrived back on the outskirts of Lydford,
and from here on, for the next 11 miles to Okehampton,
the old railway line has been turned into a dedicated
pedestrian and cycle route.
So, I won't be needing that any more.
Plain sailing for me now,
in comparison to what's back there.
Built in 1874 and straddling a particularly deep valley,
the Meldon Viaduct was a spectacular addition
to this section of the London and South West Railway.
Constructed from wrought iron and cast iron,
as opposed to the more conventional stone or brick arches,
the elegant and unique Meldon Viaduct is now a scheduled monument.
I've come to meet engineer, Simon Hollyer,
who's responsible for maintaining the fabric and safety
of the structure.
I do have a picture of what it was like
shortly after it was built. Wow!
You've noticed something.
That's... That's only got one...
Am I...? Yeah.
That's only got one line of, erm...
Trestles, we call them. These stanchions.
Yeah, the trestles. Right.
Well... Yeah, originally it was built as a single track.
Erm... HE CHUCKLES
Four years later, they'd open up a second one,
and there were two reasons to do that.
A - to get an extra line in there,
and at the time when they first opened it,
it was very, very nerve-racking for the people
to drive the trains across it,
because of the curve on the viaduct... Yeah, you can see that.
..and the wind. The thing used to shake around a bit.
As you can see in the photo, it's a very, very slender structure.
Yeah, it is! So, with the new structure,
which opened about four years later,
that stiffened the whole thing up.
I guess you are lowering the centre of gravity,
and you are giving it a much wider...
That's correct. ..structure for it to sit on. That's correct.
Every six years,
Simon examines every last rivet, beam, stay and strut,
as part of a rigorous inspection programme.
And today, he's agreed to take me with him,
and that means abseiling down the iron trusses on ropes.
As you can see, I have an unusual technique.
Oh, yeah, there we go.
HE GRUNTS I'm not going to let go.
HE LAUGHS
This is a fantastic way
to come and inspect this viaduct.
Woohoo!
It's only from this vantage point
that you can begin to imagine
how the second half of this structure was built.
The second row of trusses were assembled in a railway siding,
then pushed onto the original viaduct
and swung out into position by cranes.
Each truss was installed within two hours and 30 minutes,
which meant it was possible to arrange the work
around the railway timetable,
and, unbelievably, allow trains to continue to run.
Simon, this is fantastic!
What a way to view the structure!
This is why you do it, yeah.
That's right.
You need to touch every part of it.
It's the only way you can do it.
Here, you've got the manufacturer... All those rivets, in good nick...
"..R Moore." ..like they've only just been put in.
That is brilliant! Look at that.
It's good fun hanging around doing this sort of stuff,
but at end of the day, I've got to do a job when I'm here... Yeah.
..and it can be quite difficult. Yeah, absolutely.
And, as you can see, it's very, very complex. It is complex.
And it takes quite a long time to go through the whole structure.
And I guess part of that complexity
is that a number of different additions
have been made to this structure over the years
to shore it up and to deal with the elements
and the traffic that was going over the top of it? That's right.
And it is those later additions
which have given us the most problems. Is it really?
The early Victorian materials and the early Victorian structure
is still holding strong? Wrought iron, cast iron
is very good against corrosion. Wow.
Let's go down and have a little look, see what else we can find. OK.
Although the line was closed in 1968,
the viaduct continued to be used
for shunting local quarry wagons.
It wasn't until the '90s that it was deemed too weak
to carry rail traffic.
Six years later, it was refurbished
and given a new lease of life
as part of the granite way cycle and footpath.
Once over the viaduct,
the old railway line continued
alongside a now disused local quarry.
When the London and South Western Railway
were excavating the foundations of the Meldon Viaduct,
their workers were impeded
by layers of an extremely hard local stone.
But while that stone impeded
the building of the railway in one sense,
it was an enormous help in another,
as it was found to have the perfect properties
for something called railway ballast,
and it's this stuff here.
It forms a very stable track bed.
It also allows for good drainage of water through it,
and it's so hard it won't crush under the weight of the sleepers,
the rails and the passing trains over the top.
It's quite literally the foundation stone of the railways,
and you'll find it under almost every mile of track laid in Britain.
And millions upon millions of tonnes of it
came from right here - Meldon Quarry.
First excavated in 1897,
expanded to 200 acres in 1902,
and by 1953, producing 340,000 tonnes every year,
Meldon Quarry became one of the biggest sources of railway ballast
in the country.
Walking through the quarry now is an extraordinary experience.
The sheer size and scale of this place is intimidating.
I've joined Graham Hicks, who used to run the quarry.
He's going to take me to where they conducted
the very last excavation blast,
before the quarry was closed in 2011.
What rock made up railway ballast?
They were seeking the hornfels as railway ballast.
There are other geological types here.
Hornfels? That was the name of the rock type, was it? Yes.
Yeah. And it's very hard, tough,
very abrasive to work.
And so where are we coming to here?
We're coming here now, this was the last blast,
and this is the hornfels mineral.
The last blast?
And that was probably in about April or May 2011.
Yeah. And, as you can see,
a lot of it's still there, unprocessed.
So, it was blasted and never consumed.
But this is hornfels here, is it? It is.
This is the rock that was being used for railway ballast?
But that... Obviously, all this stuff's way too big.
I mean, what...? Goes off to a crusher,
and you're looking for something, I think, with the maximum size
of about 63mm. All right.
So, what, this? That's probably a bit big, that, is it? But...
That kind of thing? That sort of area. Yeah?
It's very hard. Cos i guess that's what you want, wouldn't you?
You want a rock that isn't going to move,
isn't going to get crushed under the weight of the train
when it comes along, and gives you a real stable track bed? Yeah, yeah.
Some stable, free draining. Hornfel did that?
It performed very well.
So, the ballast from here was being transported where?
How far and wide from here?
Well, it was really...
You know, by the '30s it was known as the Southern Railway,
so it's south and west of the country, really.
Yeah, that's quite a large area, though. It was a good area.
So, they were doing good business out of this quarry?
They were doing hundreds of thousands of tonnes a year.
Wow. Wow.
Sadly, with few new railways being built,
the demand for railway ballast has fallen over the years.
The quarry has been mothballed,
until, that is,
they bring back all those lovely branch lines.
Less than a mile away from Meldon Quarry,
and up on the high moor is Okehampton army camp.
For as far back as the bronze ages,
Dartmoor's been used as a defensive location.
And in the late 19th century,
the completion of the London and South Western Railway
kick-started military training here in earnest,
bringing soldiers to and from Okehampton station,
before making their way here to Okehampton Army Camp,
up on the high moors.
But, there's a short section of railway
hidden away out there somewhere,
that helped those soldiers with their sharp shooting.
Crispin, we good to go? Let's do it!
Let's mount up and head out.
The London and South West Railway
never ventured up onto Dartmoor itself -
the gradient was too steep.
But a very different kind of railway was constructed here.
Built in the shape of a figure of eight,
the sole purpose of the Rowtor Railway
was to provide moving target practice for the army.
Fallen into disuse in recent years,
Lieutenant Colonel Crispin d'Apice
has offered to show me what's left of it.
After an extremely bumpy ride,
we arrive at what looks like a stone bunker.
Here we are!
Ha-ha!
We've got ourselves some railway tracks.
And what looks like a railway shed.
Wow! There you are.
Inside, is what's known as a Wickham trolley,
a railway engineering personnel carrier.
Let's have a look.
Powered by a standard four-cylinder car engine,
each Wickham trolley was adapted to a specific use.
Even got a registration number.
THEY LAUGH
This Wickham trolley could be expected to be shot at
and shelled on a regular basis,
so, to protect it, it was thoroughly armour-plated,
which is why it ended up looking more like a small tank.
This is an infantry target. OK.
So, this is a charging man,
and what you do... In reality it'd be a much bigger target.
It'd be replicating a tank,
but you'd put this here,
trundles along and therefore what you're hoping is people firing,
they don't see the engine. They're not engaging the engine.
They're obviously engaging the target. Gotcha.
And then you're getting indications
as to whether they're hitting it or not.
So, now I've seen how it all works,
Crispin shows me the route the railway line took
the moving target on.
OK. yeah. So, it's the little turning loop here. Yep.
And then... Yeah, and so it just putters along, comes around,
keeps on going, comes back on itself
and then goes back down this way.
An embankment was built
along the straight section of the target railway
to protect the Wickham trolley from being fired at.
This is where you want to be engaging the target, so... OK.
On the long straight? Yeah, on the long straight,
so that way it's your moving target,
right to left, left to right.
Having grasped how the target railway works,
we retreat to one of the firing positions.
Over the years, generations of recruits
would have perfected their aim on this firing range.
That target's quite small from here. Yeah, it is.
Thankfully for the sheep,
this rifle's been decommissioned.
It's got a kick like a mule. SHEEP BLEAT
I'm going to complete my journey to Okehampton
with a man who wants to bring my lost line
back into the national rail network.
I'm hoping that I'll live long enough
so I'll be able to ride on a train again
from Exeter to Plymouth, via Okehampton.
TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS
I'm following the route
of the London and South West Railway
from Plymouth to Exeter.
I'm back at Meldon Viaduct station,
waiting for the next heritage line train
to take me the last three miles onto Okehampton.
I'm being joined by Richard Westlake.
Richard spent his entire life working on the railways.
He regularly drove trains just like this one
along the entire length of the lost line I've just walked,
before it was closed in the 1960s.
Oh, yeah. These were the excellent compartments you have -
all first class.
I want to hear what life was like working on the railways
in their heyday,
and I want to understand why Richard thinks this lost line
should be reopened.
SHE BLOWS WHISTLE
Oh, here we go. There's a whistle.
Yeah, there we are. Here we go.
And a little toot from the engine,
and we're away, look! Hey, hey!
So, this, albeit quite a short bit of line here,
it's fairly important, this.
This is a heritage railway now running here? Yeah.
It's a heritage railway, which runs from here...
From Meldon. That's right.
And that's been running for how long?
Oh, I suppose about ten years now. Yeah.
Before that it was the main line -
the southern region main line - to Plymouth.
Your relationship with this line goes right back
to the very start of your life, doesn't it? I suppose, in a way.
I was brought up in a railway family.
My father was a train driver,
had six or seven brothers -
I think seven -
and all were on the railway.
So that leaves your immediate family.
Was the railway, then, kind of an extended family for you,
and everybody else who worked on there,
be it an actual relative or not?
Very much so, and they always did say,
and I think there's some truth in it,
that to get on to the footplate on the railway,
you had to be a part of that family.
You had to have a father who was a fireman or a driver.
I think some of it was because of the shift system we used to work.
You could come on at any time day and night -
1:00, 2:00, 3:00 in the morning -
and if you were perhaps unreliable, you overslept,
you didn't turn up,
then you could always have a word with father,
or someone in the family and say... Who could cover your shift?
"Come on! You've got to buck up, otherwise you won't have a job."
I'm with you. So, it was a very close-knit community,
and everybody knew everybody,
and we all worked together,
and they were very enjoyable days.
Richard believes the lost line I've just walked could be reopened
and brought back into the rail network.
I want to know why.
I want to give a bit back,
and therefore I'm part of the Okerail Forum,
who are really campaigning hard
to get this line reopened to Okehampton.
What's happening now is, there's a resurgence in rail travel,
and to not to be on any network at all is really a downside,
I think, for tourism, but not only that,
for the economy of the region.
I'm sure Okehampton to be back on the map again,
to be a major rail head,
will make a huge difference.
Are you hopeful, then, that the service will be extended
back along where I've come from,
all the way back down to Plymouth?
I'm hoping that I'll live long enough,
so I'll be able to ride on a train again,
from Exeter to Plymouth,
via Okehampton.
Through Dartmoor? Through Dartmoor.
And what better scenery could I have anywhere in the country?
It would be a huge achievement for Richard and the Okerail Forum
if the lost line between Plymouth and Okehampton was reopened,
and there's a fighting chance it might.
After all, Okerail was successful in reopening
the Okehampton to Exeter line,
and bringing it back into the network in 1997.
This is the end of my lost line,
and the beginning of the refound line
that will take me from here to my final destination,
Exeter.
Walking this line,
I've seen the abundance of uses it was put to
over its almost 100 years of service.
The fact is that many of the demands
that drove the development of this railway in the first place
still exist today.
So, the call to reinstate it isn't purely nostalgic,
and it's only due to dogged campaigning,
like Richard's Okerail Forum,
that I'm able to complete my journey
from Plymouth all the way to Exeter,
just as they did 50 years ago, on the train.
SPEAKER: The 17:59 Great Western Railway Service
for Exeter St David's is now ready to depart.
Please stand way clear.
HE BLOWS HIS WHISTLE
Next time, i walk the lost lakes line,
from Penrith to Cockermouth.
To the great unknown.
Built to ease the backbreaking strain on miners and their beasts...
Before it was a horse and cart.
Well, where are you going to go with a horse and cart?
..but became useful for all sorts of reasons.
Quite a few people use the railways
to have one girlfriend in Keswick
and one in Penrith,
and that made sure they never met, you see.
And I consider the future of the route.
Something like driverless pods?
There's a thought. Yeah.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media