The South West
In the far South West of England, there has been a long campaign to restore a railway line which used to run across moorland from Exeter to Plymouth. The campaign was boosted in 2014 when storm damage meant closure of the only remaining rail connection between the South West peninsula and the rest of the country. The closure lasted six weeks and the lost revenue was estimated at one billion pounds – approximately the same cost as restoring the whole of the moorland route!
The surviving link is a beautiful coastal route which runs alongside the Atlantic Ocean between Teignmouth and Dawlish. Beautiful, but vulnerable when strong winds and high tides combine to send waves over the track. Expensive repairs have strengthened the line but not made it immune to further damage – especially if climate change makes those storms more frequent and intense. An inland alternative across the moors makes economic sense as well as providing amenities for towns along the route.
The North East
As in the North East, however, progress is painfully slow and comes in stages. Campaigners have to be prepared for setbacks and, more than that, they have to be prepared for progress to take decades. The campaign to restore the Northumberland Line took at least two decades. The campaign to restore the moorland route from Exeter to Plymouth will take a generation.
The reason for this is obvious enough. Few politicians want to say ‘No’ to a campaign to restore a railway line. They may well want to spend their money on other priorities or face expenditure cuts, but refusal always comes at a political cost. They therefore agree that a proposal would be a good idea but point out that various hurdles have to be cleared first. A favourite hurdle is the ‘business case’. They may be willing to fund the business case, which costs much less than starting work on the line. Even if the business case proves compelling, it will delay for a few years the arrival of boots on the ground to build the new railway.
The South West has had its own successful equivalent to the opening of the Northumberland Line in the North East. Part of the Moorland route has been re-opened, connecting Exeter with Okehampton. As with the Northumberland route, the take-up has been much greater than expected (‘business cases’ notoriously under-estimate the take-up from a restored line) and re-opening has been hailed as a success. But as with the Northumberland route, it is only a partial success. Just as the Northumberland route leaves the extension to the Northumberland coast at Newbiggin still to be completed, so the Moorland route needs to restore the rest of the route to Plymouth.
Here too, as in the North East, the inevitable delaying tactics make their presence felt. In comes the inevitable demand for a ‘business case.’ Devon County Council first submitted a business plan for restoring the line between Plymouth and Tavistock in 2022. But then came the cancellation of the Restoring Your Railways scheme by the Labour government in 2024. This put the whole project on hold and now (2026) the local newspaper reports that the County Council is unwilling to provide more money in order to ‘complete’ the business plan. The same point was made in a report to the BBC in June 2025, Hence a business case submitted in 2022 now looks as if it will be declared defunct because four years later it apparently cannot be ‘completed’. Unsurprisingly, local campaign groups are devastated. Meanwhile the local campaign group Tavy Rail has been canvassing its members on whether they would like to walk the line voluntarily trimming hedgerows and helping to make it accessible to walkers. Perhaps before long they’ll be volunteering to lay track!
In the North East the situation is not so difficult. Support has been forthcoming from the North-East mayor Kim McGuinness, though even here the same signs of delay are at hand. SENRUG (the South-East Northumberland Rail User Group) has been trying to meet with the mayor and her team for more than two years now without success, and SENRUG reported that the recent grandly named ‘Mayor’s Rail Vision Engagement Event’ took place without the mayor herself and contented itself with repeating proposals made two years ago.
Thinking like popes
Up and down the country, rail user groups have to think in centuries like popes. They can expect their proposals to re-open lines to meet with expressions of support but there will also be a series of hurdles put in their way which means that stamina, resilience and even a long life are necessary to seeing projects through. The costs of restoring lines are relatively low, a tiny percentage of what is being spent on HS2, and it is galling for those who are told that their lines may be too expensive to start to read that HS2 might be too expensive to stop! But in one respect everyone can be optimistic. Once the lines are built and re-opened, there will be no going back. Even those who said that they were too costly to build will agree when they finally arrive that they are here to stay. It is the perfect example of something that the present generation of railway enthusiasts, who tend to be quite old, can pass on to future generations who may be the only ones still around to enjoy the ride when the lines finally re-open. All in all, it seems to be a better thing to leave your grandchildren than the effects of climate change.
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