The Totnes to Dartmouth extension (part two)

Dittisham Station

After crossing Dittisham Creek, a short tunnel gives us an opportunity for another cliché – a church on top of a tunnel. Then onto a small riverside station with one siding. Perhaps for local agriculture and fisheries? Trains stop here to allow foot passengers to get the ferry to Greenway for the tour around Agatha Cristie’s house and gardens.

Dartmouth Dockyard

This proved to be the most difficult part of the whole extension. Not because of the landscape, but because the railway would have to go through the grounds of Dartmouth Naval College. Steeped in tradition (some say pickled in gin), the staff of the college, and many senior ranks in HM Admiralty, all reacted fiercely. Especially (and most of all) to the very idea that their sacred place of naval birth should be interfered with - in any way at all - by lower-class civilian engineers and trades people.

Appealing to their civic duty cut no ice at all.

But pictures of a shiny new HM Navy Dockyard with lots of space for bigger and better boats did the trick. More toys for the boys. The new dockyard is shown here in grey, slightly up river, opposite Noss Point, with the railway running alongside it.

Dartmouth Town terminus

“Dartmouth Station” had been sadly standing alone for so many years, bravely selling tickets and ice creams to wayward tourists and travellers. With only the occasional whiff of steam and smoke from trains across the river at Kingswear to make it feel like a real railway station building. 😒

At last it could be reunited with a real railway, with its very own platform, and bask warmly in the summer sunshine. While visiting GWR steam engines could happily peep-peep to their friends across the river. 🙂

The end.

Some spectacular scenery, but a lot of spectacular gradients as well...

14 minutes ago, Miss Prism said:

Some spectacular scenery, but a lot of spectacular gradients as well...

Very true, that's why I've been careful to follow the contour line as much as possible on the way down the valley.

I’m not entirely sure how open Mrs Mallowan (A. Christie) would have been to people visiting her country abode whilst she was still resident. My grandmother knew her personally through her role as secretary to her solicitors in Torquay in the late 40s/ early 50s. I also can’t think of many other rivers/estuaries that were served by the GWR on both banks. Off the top of my head I can only think of the Cleddau being rail served both at pembroke dock and Neyland; the Tamar and the Severn at various places.

9 hours ago, 7802 said:

I also can’t think of many other rivers/estuaries that were served by the GWR on both banks. 

The river Avon in Bristol is another and a few of the Valleys in South Wales.

Most of the Tamar was only served by the LSWR/SR; where there was an overlap with the GWR this was mostly restricted to the dockyard area with both lines on the west bank. In south Wales there was an example of a GW line one side of the river and a GW/Rhymney joint line on the other, plus others where the other company was the Taff Vale or the LNWR, but on the whole most of the duplication only came as a result of the grouping.

14 hours ago, KeithMacdonald said:

But pictures of a shiny new HM Navy Dockyard with lots of space for bigger and better boats did the trick

Dartmouth was a fairly important port in the mediaeval to early Tudor period, hence Dartmouth and Kingswear Castles, and saw commercial use as late as the 1970s. However, there were very practical reasons why Drake waited for the Armada in Plymouth, and the Napoleonic era fleets never waited out bad weather west of Torbay, and which lead to the RN dockyard being established on the Tamar, not the Dart. The advent of steam ships changed the reasons, but not the outcome. The Dart was used to lay up medium size merchant ships in small numbers in the 1960s and 1970s, but there was limited deep water, and not very deep at that.

The Royal Naval College was built on its current site in 1905, incidentally. Before that it was two wooden hulks moored slightly lower down the river - the former HMS Britannia and Hindostan.

25 minutes ago, Cwmtwrch said:

The Dart was used to lay up medium size merchant ships in small numbers in the 1960s and 1970s, but there was limited deep water, and not very deep at that.

The Fal is far better suited for that. Going up river past King Harry Ferry, where the banks start to close in, you can round a corner and find yourself dwarfed by big ships tucked away in the deep channel.

33 minutes ago, Cwmtwrch said:

Most of the Tamar was only served by the LSWR/SR; where there was an overlap with the GWR this was mostly restricted to the dockyard area with both lines on the west bank

Pedantry alert!

(In a slightly nasal tone)

I think you'll find it was the east bank.

Oh dear. Not doing very well, am I? Old age, I guess...

On 21/09/2023 at 15:34, Cwmtwrch said:

Oh dear. Not doing very well, am I? Old age, I guess...

It comes to us all. Some days I have to stop and think which way left and right are!

On 20/09/2023 at 22:14, 7802 said:

I’m not entirely sure how open Mrs Mallowan (A. Christie) would have been to people visiting her country abode whilst she was still resident.

In this universe, the Mallowan family has sadly fallen on hard times. Perhaps because of some lost libel case or death duties, which resulted in embarrasing impecunity. As a consequence, they followed the Longleat model and opened their estate to the general public.

This an interesting idea.

In a parallel universe a Brixham solicitor was able to commence the Brixham Railway a little earlier.

The promotors also had the foresight to ensure a facing connection onto the branch at Churston,

rather than a trailing connection. Thus the time wasting connection at Churston was done away with

and a regular service operated to and from a west facing bay platform at Torquay. This provided

a useful commuter service connecting Torquay, Paignton, Goodrington, and Brixham.

To this day Brixham is served hourly, one of the two hourly services from Exmouth terminates there,

cheers