Yep. As it is both Dorchester stations. Yeovil is twice the size of Dorch, has 75% of the number of services but only 60% of the number of footfalls. Given that both towns have London services with similar journey times I suspect that apart from the relatively central location of the stations and the fact Dorchester is a railhead for much of West Dorset, the regular service to Poole, Bournemouth and Southampton adds to Dorchester's popularity.

Found this document:
http://www.heartofwessex.org.uk/downloads/Heart%20of%20Wessex%20case%20for%20improvement%20report.pdf

which relates to the Heart of Wessex line specifically. However the passenger figures on p18 might be of more general interest, as they show various different medium-sized south-west towns' populations, passenger services per weekday and footfall. Some interesting figures as extrapolated from the link. It's not very easy reading in this format, so it may be easier to go to the page in the document:


Population (k)  Services   Footfall (k) 
 Yeovil        38  60  327
 Dorchester 18  78  543
 Weymouth 53  78  747
 Frome 26  26  121
 Trowbridge 35  84  652
 Bradford-on-Avon 11  78  378
 Chippenham 28  68 1517
 Salisbury 50 116 1758
 Honiton 12  38  293
 Weston-super-Mare 72  86  936
 Exmouth 33  62  723
 Barnstaple 21  28  303
 Newton Abbot 24 110  941
 St.Austell 23  46  395
 Truro 17 106 1042
 Falmouth 22  58  233
                                               
Some interesting statistics there - Yeovil does appear notably worse than many places, e.g. Junction has fewer passengers than Honiton even though both are on the same line and Honiton is much smaller. Probably due to Honiton serving Ottery and Sidmouth, being centrally located and having significant commuter and leisure traffic to Exeter. Whereas Junction is out in the sticks and doesn't have much of a catchment area beyond Yeovil itself.

Another is the discrepancy between Frome and Bradford-on-Avon when you compare relative populations with train numbers and footfall.

The main conclusion I'd draw is that if you have an easily accessible station with regular interval trains to places people want to go, they'll be used. If you have stations out in the sticks with irregular services, they won't be. Easier said than done of course.

No not my view, but that of Philip Hensher.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/philip-hensher/philip-hensher-the-other-railway-scandal--there-are-too-many-workers-who-are-paid-to-do-nothing-8057216.html

Difficult to know where to begin with this argument... suffice it to say if Exeter Central loses its staff, the Exmouth branch line's receipts probably wouldn't look so rosy and maybe Mr Hensher wouldn't be able to catch a train to Topsham anymore. Quite how he knows the staff are paid to do nothing is beyond me.

3 carriage 159s are quite commonly overcrowded between Exeter and Axminster or between Yeovil and Salisbury in my experience. 6 carriage trains heading east are often 70-80%ish full before Salisbury.

Loco-hauled trains couldn't have continued before the 159s turned up because their reliability rate was woeful. This was partly due to the fact that they were worked into the ground and partly because no loco hauled train has been particularly suitable for the line since it was turned from an express to a semi-fast route. The nature of the route west of Salisbury demands a rapid acceleration and rapid deceleration from 0-85mph and back approximately every 10 miles, with plenty of hill climbing. The stations between Salisbury and Honiton are all relatively well-used so skipping stops isn't going to happen even ignoring the limitations of single line working. It puts a lot of strain on one loco, compared to a multiple unit.

Granted the original substitution of 8 carriage trains with 3 carriage trains at the same frequency could have been better handled, particularly as some trains seemed to lose the middle carriage at times and go down to 2. However most regular passengers on the WoE route seem perfectly happy with the 159s given their far superior reliability to the 50 and 47 hauled services which preceded them.

The Great Western route to Cornwall is one of the few GW^▸ (Great Western) main lines without a clockface service and this thread demonstrates why, due the argument about which places should have a better or worse service. If you look at Reading each station where many trains stop between Taunton and Plymouth:

Reading - I believe two reasons virtually everything stops at Reading are a) it's a rather popular station and b) having a fast train head through for Paddington will simply mean it gets stuck behind the previous service as there are so many trains using the fast lines every hour, so any time saving is negligible.

Taunton - a big railhead for much of Somerset plus the town itself of around 40,000.

Tiverton Parkway - an odd station in that it's in the middle of nowhere, but it's well-used by people from North Devon, mid-Devon and Cornwall. If you severely slashed trains I suspect most of these people would simply drive rather than use alternate services.

Exeter St Davids - if the previous poster was suggesting that stops be cut there, I'd point out that it gets more use than any other station in Devon or Cornwall. Plus it has a 30mph speed limit so any time saving is negligible. Although rather bizarrely for a few years Virgin used to run a train that called at Totnes, NAbbot and Taunton, but not Exeter. I have no idea why but I digress.

Newton Abbot - serves a town of 20,000 plus Torquay. Again I suspect cutting stops would cause some people to drive rather than use the train.

Totnes - only serves a town of 8000 but gets a far better intercity service than Dawlish or Teignmouth, both of which are larger. But then it does serves Paignton and the South Hams, the latter of which is the wealthiest part of Devon. People with money and influence don't like having their trains removed - see the Deerstalker express saga in the early 90s.



Removing stops at any of these to speed up journeys further west is not going to go down well, just as removing stops at Didcot to speed up Brizzle and Wales services doesn't seem popular.

Apart from Broadgage's suggestion the only thing I can suggest is this:

Hourly Pad-Rdg-Exr-Plym-standard intercity stations to Penzance.
Hourly Pad-Rdg-Berks and Hants stations-Taun-TivP-Exr-NA-Tot-Ivy-Plym

Maybe every 2nd hour a Plym Newquay service allowing fewer stops on the Pad-Penzance service.

However this requires a) a business case b) sufficient trains and c) sufficient capacity including for overtaking. For c) you'd have the opportunity at Taunton, Tivvy Junction, Exeter, Dawlish Warren, NA, Totnes and Hemerdon (I think one side's still there anyway) but it'd all take a lot of effort.

I am quite impressed at the way 3 or so people is now considered 'pressure'.

As far as it goes anyway, it'd be pointless closing any stations between Crediton and Eggesford, given that trains have to cross there in order to run an hourly service and the speed limits in place on the line. Given that the wait at Eggesford can be leisurely due to the safety procedures involved, I can't see that closing a few stations so people can sit at one further along the line will help.

Newton St Cyres had a fair few people using it the other Saturday evening - presumably either heading into Exeter for a night out or back from the Beer Engine. Either way serving it when the buses won't seems to make sense.

You could possibly argue that Portsmouth Arms and Chapelton wouldn't be badly missed - but since barely any trains stop there and they're request stops so trains don't necessarily stop anyway, it would barely make any difference to the timetable. They may well be used in the peaks anyway, I'll admit I haven't been along the line then. So any closure of stations might save one or two minutes on the journey. Doesn't exactly seem worthwhile.

Weymouth has had 2 trains per hour from Waterloo since 2007 - effectively making 9-10 carriages per hour (depending whether the semi-fast service is a 444 or 450) and nearly 600 standard class seats. Although I've rarely used it in mid-summer, my personal experience is that SWT^▸ (South West Trains) services seem to be very lightly loaded south of Dorchester. Still, the DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) specified 2 trains per hour due to the Olympics so we'll see how that works.

FGW^▸ (First Great Western) Bristol-Weymouth services are always very popular on sunny days in the school holidays anyway so I assume FGW will take this into account.

There was briefly a post-Beeching Paddington-Ilfracombe service via Honiton and Castle Cary in around 1965. There might have been one to Bude as well but I'm not sure.

I have a cab ride DVD of Salisbury to Exeter where it mentions that the Western Region would probably have closed that line if they'd been able to but there was particular opposition in the Sherborne area where a lot of influential types live. Given that all stations east of Yeovil Junction now generate significant traffic including commuter traffic (look at the number of peak hour trains eastbound in the morning and westbound in the evening) it seems to have been a wise decision.

Unfortunately any Barnstaple-Paddington train via Honiton is hampered by the single track nature of the line. Exeter-Waterloo could be done in around 3 hours if all double track (that's how long most trains seemed to take when it was 2 hourly after the 159s were introduced) but is used too intensively for this now. It'd also interrupt the standard hourly service. Given that it will take at least 50 minutes for any train using the Tarka^▸ (Line from Barnstaple to Exeter) line and possibly an hour or more, it'd make more sense to send any service to Paddington even given a stop Exeter to allow the driver to change ends. There's also a 30mph speed restriction from Eggesford-Barnstaple and I'm not sure what trains other than 14x and 15x units are allowed to exceed it.

I'm not sure how competitive it would be with the North Devon Link Road to Tivvy Parkway anyway.

It's something of a historic oddity that no stations (so far as I know) on the Tarka^▸ (Line from Barnstaple to Exeter) Line closed during the Beeching era, including stations such as Chapelton and Portsmouth Arms where there isn't exactly much of a local community, and yet places such as Cullompton, Wellington, Ivybridge and Plympton lost their stations despite serving such a large area. The difference was obviously due to the aim of speeding up mainline services and withdrawing local stoppers.

I think it's been said elsewhere on here that no real time savings would be made from withdrawing current stops due to the single line and the need to pass at Eggesford and Crediton, so it'd be fairly pointless anyway. You could of course create double track from Crediton to Coleford Junction without much difficulty as there's 2 single lines already. I somehow doubt though that the Tarka Line is a major candidate for redoubling given the cost it seems to involve.

I'm not suggesting there's any merit to these suggestions - more that as an hourly service taking an hour or less doesn't seem to be possible, there'd be no benefit to closing any stations anyway. Besides the smallest stations are only served by peak hour trains anyway when I presume there's a few people using them.

The 1991-92 BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)) timetable I possess indicates that there were overnight trains from Glasgow via Edinburgh splitting into services to Plymouth and Poole. Apart from the aforementioned it only called at stations from Bristol Parkway and Oxford respectively to the south. Journey times of 11h15 northbound from Plymouth and 11h35 from Poole, 11h38 and 11h58 southbound.

I suspect the service probably vanished around the time of privatisation, as that's when the Deerstalker Express (the Fort William - Euston sleeper) was under threat.

I should also perhaps point out in fairness after my last post that Honiton and Gillingham, 2 of the busiest stations after Yeovil Junction today, were always poorly served in comparison to other stations before the regime change. Templecombe, Axminster and Sidmouth Junction were favoured as express stops due to their branch line connections. The 2 hourly service actually gave them an improved service compared to what went before.

The economies may have saved the line, but at the same time there would be increased maintenance of the remaining track due to an increase in the number of trains using it. It's a shame that well into the 1980s BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)) were constantly told by differing governments to make economies and that often meant singling lines which can create considerable delays - Burngullow - Probus was one (1986) until redoubling in 2004, Dorchester South-Moreton is one today that can cause problems as trains are scheduled virtually all day to meet not far west of Dorchester  and Cockett - Dyffyrn is another (the last two aren't really on FGW^▸ (First Great Western) territory apart from a handful of Carmarthen services but they are close by). That short-sightedness seems to have gone (for now anyway).

i think there was a general view at the times that railways were a Victorian relic and would be limited to a few major routes in due course (as per general beliefs about Beeching II and that all non-trunk routes selected for development would be closed).

That said, the original 1967 singling of the Salisbury-Exeter line was fairly absurd. It was as follows:

Exeter St Davids - Pinhoe - double track (Pinhoe had been closed in 1966, so why create a junction?)
Pinhoe - Honiton - single
Honiton loop
Honiton - Chard Junction - single with a long siding at Seaton Junction (lasted till around 1986)
Chard Junction loop (again Chard Junction station was closed in 1966, so why have a loop there?)
Chard Junction - Sherborne - single. There had been a plan to close Yeovil Junction and make all Yeovil passengers get a bus to/from Sherborne as Junction is some way out of town. Due to major opposition it never happened.
Sherborne - Templecombe - double (again Templecombe closed in 1966 - though the obvious comment that it ceases to be double before the platform does at least have that excuse)
Templecombe - Gillingham - single
Gillingham loop
Gillingham - Wilton South - single (again Wilton closed in 1966)

You have to wonder why 4 different locations were chosen for potential passing when no trains called there at the time - stopping trains in the middle of nowhere can seem a tad odd. You also have to wonder why 2 of the single sections were nearly 20 miles in length for a 2 hourly service - it doesn't give much recovery time. As it happens Yeovil-Sherborne's second track was reinstated later in 1967 because the timetable couldn't cope as it was. (Tisbury loop was added in 1986 - it's outside the station because the other platform had been sold off. Axminster obviously got its loop in 2009).

There was certainly a case for saving on costs, but it does look like there was an air of trying to ensure as quickly as possible the Waterloo route could never compete again.

What I meant to say is that the St Ives and Looe branches couldn't be adequately replaced by road transport. Anyone who's been to St Ives in the summer will know what I mean, while Looe's road connections to the A38 (and Liskeard or Plymouth) appear rather meandering. To take your examples in comparison, Seaton is fairly easy to reach from Axminster and has regular buses to Exeter, while Bude has a fairly fast (by bus standards) bus service to Exeter along A roads.

You're right though about Gunnislake and Exmouth - the Gunnislake branch originally went to Callington but that had better road connections so it was truncated at Gunnislake. Exmouth was originally listed but survived - I'm not sure how sustained the campaign was, but the passenger numbers certainly made a difference there.

Incidentally, it's interesting to note the journey times for the Tarka^▸ (Line from Barnstaple to Exeter) line haven't changed much from the 1965 timetable. I suspect that due to the overall 70/55/60mph speed limit the acceleration of modern units can only make a small difference.

It should be remembered that there was a general belief that railways were a Victorian anachronism that lasted in many places into the 1980s. Witness 'Option A' from the Serpell Report - although I've always suspected that it was leaked deliberately to create a climate where major rail closures were political dynamite. Even the Dorchester-Castle Cary line, mentioned in all potential closure reports, was never that close to closing down so far as I know.

I can't see that there was a conspiracy theory. The Great Western lines always served a larger population than the Southern lines and in Devon the only remainder of the ex-GW^▸ (Great Western) branches is the Paignton line, which was never going to close and is hardly a 'traditional' branch line. The Exmouth, Barnstaple and Bere Alston lines remain in comparison and while the first is too busy and the third too irreplaceable, it's arguable the Taunton-Barnstaple line could have stayed in favour of the Exeter-Barnstaple line to give North Devon a better link to London. I don't believe that was ever likely, but it's not implausible the figures could have been massaged to present a case if there was a conspiracy.

In Cornwall, the St Ives and Looe lines survived because they couldn't be replaced while the Falmouth line was certainly too busy. The Newquay line is something of a survivor admittedly (though does have particularly good summer traffic) but as has been said elsewhere, the Southern branches unfortunately just didn't serve large enough towns in the main to justify their retention at the time.

The S&D^▸ (Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway) had the problem that in 72 miles between Bath and Bournemouth, the largest town it served was (I think) Blandford Forum, modern population under 9000. The route was also limited to 60mph at best and had sharp gradients and lengthy single track sections which would have been very expensive to double. Other than stubs being retained as branch lines from Bath to Radstock and Poole to Blandford, it's difficult to see how it was ever going to survive as a through route. However, I am saying this from a modern perspective.

There's the simple fact as well that there are a much wider variety of lines which use Exeter as a hub. The Barnstaple, Exmouth and Paignton lines centre on Exeter while the Waterloo line starts there. Plymouth only has the Gunnislake line and maybe the Tavistock line (which uses much of the same route) in the future.

Unless trains on the lines that are there are usually heaving, it's hard to see where the demand would be. Incidentally my experience of SWT^▸ (South West Trains) services west of Exeter is that other than in high summer or on commuter services they were very lightly used - certainly when I travelled through Exeter they were much busier east of Exeter.

I believe the Penzance - Portsmouth Harbour service that Wessex used to run via Westbury was generally well used - but as it was only a 2-car train, it probably lost money.