Independent, investigative, in the public interest  Upgrade to paid

NEWS

Okehampton to Exeter “Dartmoor Line” passenger rail service reinstatement confirmed

£40 million Department for Transport “Restoring your Railway” funding to enable trains every two hours by end of this year, with plans to increase to hourly service during 2022. Stakeholders combine to get South West infrastructure needs onto Whitehall agenda.

Martin Redfern with Leigh Curtis

The Department for Transport has confirmed that regular passenger rail services will be reinstated on the Okehampton to Exeter line at the end of this year.

The new service will initially run every two hours, and is expected to increase to hourly towards the end of 2022, subject to further upgrades. Eight 130-seat trains will run each day in either direction between 7am and 10pm. Journey time from Okehampton to Exeter will be 40 minutes.

Regular passenger services on the newly-branded Dartmoor Line were withdrawn in June 1972. From 1972 the line was used to transport railway ballast from Meldon Quarry and for occasional freight traffic and charter trains. There has been a Sunday service on the line during the summer since 1997.

Funding for the £40 million reinstatement was announced in the budget on 3 March. The money will be used to purchase the line from its current owner and for upgrade and maintenance works.

Train at Okehampton Station in 2015 Train at Okehampton Station in 2015. Photo: Richard Curnow under Creative Commons license.

It will be the first project delivered under the Department for Transport Restoring Your Railway scheme which aims to reinstate some of the services and stations that were axed following the 1963 Reshaping of British Railways report. Its author, British Railways chairman Richard Beeching, called for the closure of most of the network in Devon and north east Cornwall.

Reinstatement works will involve drainage, fencing and bridge repairs, the replacement of 24,000 concrete sleepers and the installation of 29,000 tonnes of ballast. A total of eleven miles of track will be replaced.

Improvements will also be made to Okehampton station, which will not be staffed. These include the installation of a ticket vending machine, help point, public address system, information screens and CCTV. The station car park will have dedicated disabled bays and the station building and platform will be fully accessible.

All services will run to Exeter St David’s with around half the weekday services extending to Exeter Central. Weekend services will be extended to Exeter Central where possible at a later date. All trains will also stop at Crediton and some services will stop at Newton St Cyres.

The new service will mark the 150th anniversary of the railway arriving in Okehampton in 1871. Trains will not run on the Dartmoor Line during reinstatement works.

Southern Region timetable map 1962 Southern Region timetable map 1962.
Image © Devon & Cornwall Rail Partnership and Dartmoor Line project partners.

In 1994, as part of the privatisation of British Rail, the line from Okehampton to Coleford Junction (where it meets the Exeter to Barnstaple Tarka Line), Meldon Quarry and Okehampton station were all sold to an aggregates company.

The station, which had fallen into disrepair since the 1972 passenger services withdrawal, was sold on to Devon County Council and restoration began.

Dartmoor Railway, a Community Interest Company, was founded in 1997 to operate the line as a heritage service which included summer excursions and Christmas special railway rides.

Great Western Railway also ran a passenger service on summer Sundays with financial support from Devon County Council via the Sunday Rover ticket.

The ticket was withdrawn in 2015 but a similar combined bus and train offer was reintroduced in 2019. However services on the line were withdrawn in December 2019 and Dartmoor Railway CIC entered administration in February last year.

Okehampton station in 1997 Okehampton station in 1997. Photo © Devon County Council.

Meanwhile the OkeRail Forum and Community Interest Company was formed in 2014 to campaign for the restoration of passenger services on the line, and Central Devon MP Mel Stride facilitated numerous meetings with government ministers, local councillors, campaigners and representatives from Great Western Railways and Network Rail.

The combined efforts of stakeholders led to Chris Grayling, then Secretary of State for Transport, asking Great Western Railways to draw up a reopening plan in January 2018.

Preliminary work started on the ground in 2020, when Network Rail and Great Western Railway began assessing the infrastructure and control system improvements necessary to bring the line up to the required safety standards.

The plan to reopen the line finally appeared in the National Infrastructure Strategy alongside the Chancellor’s Autumn Spending Review in November last year.

Okehamption station platform in 2006 Okehamption station platform in 2006. Photo: Graham Tait under Creative Commons license.

The aspiration to reopen the line further westwards remains. The vision is to connect Exeter to Plymouth by rail without travelling via Dawlish, where parts of the sea wall were breached in 2014 during a storm, undermining the track and forcing its closure for two months.

Peninsula Rail Task Force, which was formed in 2013 following a series of severe weather events, published a South West Peninsula strategic rail blueprint to address this and other regional rail infrastructure issues in 2016.

It proposed long term investment in south west transport resilience to address the region’s vulnerability to increasing numbers of climate change-related severe weather incidents.

Independent, investigative, in the public interest

Exeter Observer publishes the independent investigative journalism our local democracy needs.

It can do this because it is the city's only news organisation that doesn't have to answer to advertisers, remote shareholders or those in power.

Instead, its not-for-profit public interest business model is simple.

It depends on readers like you to sustain our reporting by contributing a small amount each month.

Lots of people currently chip in like this, but it's not enough to cover our costs. We need more paying subscribers to continue publishing.

133 of the 300 readers we need have signed up so far. Help us reach our goal by joining them today, if you haven't already.

Upgrade to a paid Exeter Observer subscription from less than £2/week to support our work and get access to exclusive premium content and more.

Upgrade to paid

More stories
Grace Road Fields in March

Botched consultation restarted on sale of 8.5 acres of Riverside Valley Park green space

Council land disposal to include rights to lay underground distribution pipework across River Exe floodplain following “low-to-zero carbon” Grace Road Fields heat plant planning approval in face of Environment Agency sequential test concerns.

September 2025 permitted replacement scheme west elevation

Council denies data and contrives criteria to dismiss community balance concerns in third King Billy student block approval

Exeter Observer analysis finds more students living in city centre than residents as council bid to include PBSA in housing delivery figures weakens local planning policy – but does not remove it from decision-making altogether.

Exeter College and Petroc campuses map

Exeter College and Petroc merger set to create largest college group in South West

Colleges hold public consultation on creation of new organisation which they say would educate 16,000 students at Exeter and North Devon campuses and employ 2,000 staff with £100 million turnover.

Proposed Clarendon House student block aerial view

Proposals to replace Clarendon House with 297-bed student accommodation complex submitted for approval

Developer Zinc Real Estate arrives at final proposal for up to ten storey Paris Street roundabout redevelopment after nearly two years of informal public consultations and meetings with city councillors and officers.

Nadder Park Road application site location map

Barley Lane greenfield plans place persistent threat to Exeter’s north and north-west hills in spotlight

Council inability to identify sufficient land to meet government housing delivery targets leaves residents with faint hope of local plan policies preventing Nadder Park Road ridgeline development despite 175 public objections to scheme.

On Our Radar
Two Moors Festival musicians performing

WEDNESDAY 1 TO SUNDAY 12 OCTOBER 2025

Two Moors Festival

Chamber music festival celebrates 25th anniversary with performances, talks and workshops across fifteen venues.

DARTMOOR, EXMOOR & SURROUNDS

Play Interact Explore installation

SATURDAY 4 OCTOBER TO SUNDAY 2 NOVEMBER 2025

Play Interact Explore

Theatre Alibi hosts an interactive exhibition suitable for all ages created by artists Leap then Look.

EMMANUEL HALL

Still from How the Little Mole Got His Trousers

SATURDAY 18 OCTOBER 2025

Nature’s Resources

A programme of six short animated films explores the relationship between humans and non-human species.

EXETER PHOENIX