I once travelled on the 2010 SWT^▸ (South West Trains) departure from Exeter St Davids to Basingstoke (before the hourly service came in) which had 9 carriages, but only the front 3 were in use. I got on at Exeter Central - the fact that the train came in the platform in full (probably due to the gradient) meant everyone had to hurry all the way down the platform.

I think the reason was that as SWT try to station all bar a handful of units at Salisbury overnight for maintenance, they sent much bigger trains back towards Salisbury in the evening than they actually need, so it's for operational convenience.

If it's any help, that definitely appears to be the north end of Coryton Tunnel, the second tunnel west from Dawlish. There's a viewpoint on the clifftop. If you type 'Coryton Cove, Dawlish' into Google Maps and click on the first option, you can see roughly where the photographer would have been. There's also a better view if you request street view on the map itself.

It shows the photographer wouldn't have been close enough to see what the driver was doing. I don't know enough about cameras to guess what effect the distance would have had on the image.

Thanks for the replies and the offers of help. Just for comparison I looked at Bristol, Birmingham and Wolverhampton - Preston advance fares on Tuesday 13th, Weds 14th and Saturday 17th September (dates nearly 3 months away which I can't imagine being that popular that quickly) - and there's either no advance off-peak fares or Virgin fares about ^1 cheaper than the standard off peak ticket. I don't want to travel those days - it just seems to confirm it's a bit of a waste of time even looking for advance fares. Which it seems to be if you want to go the most direct route.

Sadly I don't have a railcard and I'm not eligible for one that would be of any of use, so no discounts for me. I think the cheapest split ticket option appears to be via Manchester for ^60ish in total, splitting at Cheltenham-Wolverhampton-Stoke-Manchester. Using Virgin from Brum/Wolverhampton seems to be more expensive at around ^66 minimum. However if anyone can come up with a better option then I stand corrected.

I was looking at going from Temple Meads to Preston on Saturday 20th August (returning same day) and I assumed there might be some cheap fares available. There aren't any directly. I then tried Birmingham - Preston and Wolverhampton - Preston assuming that there might be something given that Virgin run direct trains between them (I can split day tickets for only slightly more than the advance fares as far as Wolverhampton). There still doesn't seem to be anything available for less than ^21 each way from Wolverhampton on the Virgin website - although as the offpeak single fare is stated to be ^19.45, an advance fare for ^21 doesn't seem great value! Birmingham's no better.

I wondered if anyone knows whether advance fares are like gold dust on that route or whether they just don't exist and I'd need to look at going via Manchester instead. Cheers for any help you can give. I assume they don't exist for Bristol-Preston but I'm puzzled if they don't from at least Birmingham up.

I used to work in the Devon County Council education department at one time (though not school transport) and can confirm that the policy was for children over 3 miles to get free school transport to their catchment school or the nearest school with an available place if none was available at the catchment school (e.g. if they moved in term time). Torquay Grammar School wouldn't qualify on either ground for children from Devon as it's a selective school. So children/their parents from Starcross-Newton Abbot stations would be paying for transport. I don't know how Torquay BC arrange their travel system though.

There's a few examples around the south-west like that - Dorchester South and West is another one where it'd make more sense to have had one station, although any joint station now would be on the way out of town. Yeovil Junction was built as it was as the LSWR^▸ (London South Western Railway) builders wanted a high speed route and (I believe) due to the hills it was easier to take the line south of Yeovil.

It could be worse though - the Western Region had plans to close Yeovil Junction in the 1960s due to its location and send all Yeovil passengers to Sherborne instead. This was not popular so it was rescinded. The original Beeching Report also suggested closing all stations between Castle Cary and Weymouth but retaining the line. Quite how it was expected to remain even vaguely economic by closing stations at Yeovil and Dorchester I'm not sure.

I would imagine that it would be easier to run 165/166s over former GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) lines rather than southern lines which were built to the broad gauge standard. In the west I think (but I could be wrong) that would basically be everything except:

Barnstaple, Exmouth and Gunnislake branches (plus Okehampton if that ever reopens)
Salisbury - Portsmouth Harbour
Dawlish Warren - Teignmouth (this section of line was only doubled after the end of the broad gauge in around 1906)
Swindon - Newport

It is noticeable on a driver's eye view I have that the bridges and tunnels on the Westbury - Weymouth line are quite generous in width even where there's dual tracks. I appreciate there's more to gauging than how 19th century engineers laid out their lines though. The structures that I'd guess would be trickiest for 165/166s on the Cardiff - Portsmouth route would be the Severn, Patchway and Southampton Tunnels. But that may have changed.

I have a driver's eye view DVD of Westbury to Weymouth from 2005 and I think the original speed limits are as follows from Castle Cary - Dorchester:

75mph Castle Cary - Yeovil
15mph through Pen Mill
45mph Yeovil PM - Yetminster
75mph Yetminster - Maiden Newton save for a 55mph restriction through Evershot Tunnel
15mph through Maiden Newton
60mph Maiden Newton - north of Frampton Tunnel
75mph Frampton Tunnel - Dorchester West
15mph through Dorchester West then 25mph to Dorchester Junction

It is noticeable from both that and journeys over the line that there's a lot of jointed or bullhead track still, which is surprising when lines like the Exmouth branch seem to be mostly continuously welded rail these days (I know the Exmouth branch is probably a lot more cost-effective to run but it's quite short and there's lots of station stops so I'd guess speed isn't a vital concern). I would assume that if the track was upgraded it should be possible to restore or slightly increase those speed limits. But I'm not an engineer so I don't claim to be an expert.

Interesting responses. As I say I wasn't personally inconvenienced - but obviously others were. I certainly wouldn't criticise the FGW^▸ (First Great Western) staff, they seemed to be doing their best to resolve the problem and a Pacer is better than no train at all.

It just seemed like the kind of thing that BR^▸ (British Rail(ways)) might have resolved by directing passengers at Exeter onto the XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise)) service and getting them to change again at Taunton - more changes, but they'd have more room, particularly given the bank holiday luggage. Unfortunately the railways have 'target culture' like everyone else and I can understand why FGW would prefer their HST^▸ (High Speed Train) to depart on time to avoid a fine, even if it would be more inconvenient for travellers.

Still, it's arguable there wouldn't be as many services under BR so swings and roundabouts (although that's contentious in itself).

I was travelling back from Axminster to Bristol today and arrived at St Davids at 1642 intending to catch the 1653 XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise)) service to Bristol TM^‡(resolve), which was on platform 6. At the same time a 1641 service to London Paddington pulled in on platform 5 formed of a class 143 Pacer. The destination board said Taunton and the station staff confirmed (not to me personally, through shouting) this was an HST^▸ (High Speed Train) substitute as far as Taunton where an HST would take over.

Needless to say this was pretty well rammed to the gunnels and getting worse given the number of people with chunky luggage. The XC Voyager on the other hand was virtually empty - 2 other people besides me in my carriage. The Pacer departed at about 1646 and the Voyager on time - my train arrived at Taunton at 1720. The Pacer was on 1 side of the island platform and the HST on the other with passengers moving between the two. The XC service then (I think but I wasn't paying attention) left before the HST.

There's no regular 1641 service and I realise it's a bank holiday. It did occur to me though that surely the sensible thing to do would have been to move any passengers on non-TOC^▸ (Train Operating Company) specific tickets onto the Voyager as far as Taunton (it remained no more than 1/4 full as far as Temple Meads). The Pacer would inevitably lose time given its 75mph max speed anyway (although it seemed to be far enough ahead not to affect the Voyager). Is there any reason this couldn't have been done and is this a regular sort of problem?

Oh, and before anyone comments they'd prefer to spend 30 minutes on a Pacer than a Voyager - if you'd really rather stay on an extremely cramped, probably rather hot train with bus suspension than a virtually empty air conditioned express service (admittedly with some faults) then it's your choice I suppose. But not mine.

This website might be of some interest to some people as it shows how fast in theory trains could go between stops:

http://www.railperf.org.uk/fastest.php

So for instance Exeter-Plymouth each way can apparently be done in around 46-47 minutes. Having said that, this is probably based partly on performances when speed limits were more liberally interpreted and partly on trains having a clear run. FGW^▸ (First Great Western) could probably speed some services up but due to penalties for poor performance and the difficulty of running trains with less recovery time if anything goes wrong, I doubt FGW would want to do so.

The population spread of Deb'n and Kernow means that there'll always be plenty of people using Newton Abbot and Totnes as a railhead, particularly from Torquay and Paignton respectively, while in Cornwall the fact that there are no towns with more than 40,000 people unless you lump Redruth and Camborne together, but plenty with 10,000-20,000 means that it makes more sense to serve lots of stations than a few.

On a similar note, East Coast are planning to run Edinburgh-Kings Cross in 4 hours exactly from May, stopping at Newcastle only. It'll be interesting to see how long that survives given the limited recovery time.

I'm sure I read once that 153s were also referred to as tombstones or gravestones as 1-carriage trains appearing on your local line was a sign it was doomed. Fortunately that hasn't been the case yet.

On a slightly different note, some lines have nicknames. Waterloo-Exeter was known as the Mule due to the fact that there was a lot of jointed track so you could hear a clip-clop sound all along the line. I think most of it's now continous welded rail so you don't get that anymore. I think Taunton - Reading (the Berks and Hants) was known as the Desert due to the fact it passed through largely empty countryside.

An off-peak day return from Truro to Exeter is only ^16.40 - hardly expensive and cheaper than driving. Although an off-peak return is ^32 and an Anytime Return is ^40 - not quite so cheap. Weymouth-Bristol trains are (or were) more commonly 2-car 150s than 3-car 158s, so it's not really any better on the whole than Plymouth-Penzance services, which do at least see a decent number of HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train) (and if you know much about the timetable you can work out which services are HSTs as it'll say they go to Paddington).

I wonder if there'd be much scope for an hourly Plymouth-Penzance calling at Liskeard, Bodmin Pway, St Austell, Truro, Redruth, Camborne, St Erth and Penzance every hour (and Par and Hayle every other hour), with a Plymouth-Newquay service calling at all stations every hour (or at least every 2 hours). But as it would involve sufficient trains and track capacity (and wouldn't be great for Newquay line passengers), it probably isn't likely.

Cheers - that does answer a few questions.

I travelled on the 1609 from Axminster to Castle Cary yesterday (it was quicker to go that way to Bristol than my normal route via Exeter). For some reason there seemed to be a built in stop at Chard Junction even though we didn't pass anything and used the fast 'up' line (as far as I know Chard Jc has bidirectional lines, with the down line being used for the first train in either direction so the second train may not have to stop). As the train was scheduled to take 27 minutes to Yeovil from Axminster, this seems to have been built in.

I think Yeovil Junc - Pen Mill is token worked as is Pen Mill-Castle Cary, as the train had a few minutes wait at Junction before a scheduled stop at Pen Mill to collect tokens. It had a pretty meandering 64 minutes scheduled from Axminster to Castle Cary for what's a journey of about 37-ish miles. But that's engineering works and single line working for you.