Movie The Trains Of Teignmouth

Smashing film, Dave, of a line I never tire of - either as a passenger or a watcher from the sea wall. Your film not only includes plenty of HSTs (now around 35-years-old) but also the much-newer Voyagers which are simply too cramped and too short for long-distance journeys to Scotland and the North. And, because it's the autumn of 2007, you got in just before the return of the infamous "pacers":



www.4thfriday.co.uk

The bare bones of the history of the line tell us that Dawlish and Teignmouth stations were opened to passengers in May 1846 with the extension to Newton Abbot seven months later. Totnes followed in July 1847 and Plymouth (Laira Green) in May 1848. The branch to Torre saw services commence in December 1848 but it wasn't until 1859 that the railway reached Torquay and Paignton.

But that only tells the story of what happened. What didn't occur is equally fascinating....

Brunel originally surveyed the Exeter to Teignmouth section back in the mid 1830s, several years before the railways had even reached Bristol. One of his early ideas was for the line to cross the Teign at Shaldon and head to Torquay before crossing the Dart and heading through the South Hams to Plymouth.

I can’t find any detail of what this would have entailed but it would have certainly cut Newton Abbot out of the equation as well as causing a sequence of events which would have left Torquay looking very different to what it does today.

Just imagine it. Would it have meant a route via Stokeinteignhead and Barton – necessitating a fair few tunnels – or a coastal ledge passing Maidencombe? In the latter case you start to think about a tunnel through the Ness, Oddicombe beach being totally encased by the railway and another tunnel under St Marychurch emerging somewhere in the Union Street valley on its way to the harbour.

Then in the 1850s, after the line arrived at Torre, there was further debate about how it should proceed to Torquay. One idea was to head to the area near the present Town Hall at Castle Circus – where a town station was mooted – before taking the Fleet valley to the harbour. In this case any extension to Paignton would have followed the present sea front. Another proposal was for the line to follow the route of (what is now) Avenue Road and pass near Torre Abbey on its way to the harbour (with one variation crossing the angle of the bay by way of the Harbreck Rocks off Torre Abbey Sands).

Think either proposal through and you start to visualise a totally different town. Had the railway passed along the Fleet valley it’s highly unlikely that particular area would have survived to become the main shopping centre. That, in itself, might not have been a bad idea and fits my pet theory that the surrounds of Lucius Street would have made a for a far better town centre which could have been developed on a grand scale with a modicum of Victorian imagination.

James, you might be interested in this map from Ian Allen's British Railway Atlas 1955. The Haldon Hills route could be the old Teign Valley line, the closure of which (in 1958) is occasionally still mentioned in the local media as an act of folly. However I vaguely remember a briefly-aired proposal (within the last 20 years??) to build a new line inland of Teignmouth, from near Bishopsteignton to near Starcross tunnelling under Little Haldon in the process. I guess this could have been for fast mainline trains with Dawlish and Teignmouth retaining a loop line for local services almost in the style of Weston-super-Mare.