Looe Branch Line - cancellations, engineering work, closures and incidents (merged topic)

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Slow train to HEAVEN: One man's two-year, 30,000-mile quest to find Britain's most enchanting rail journeys

The ancient signal clatters down and there^s a friendly wave from the guard. It^s time to climb aboard the little branch-line train, pottering along an idyllic Cornish valley to a perfect seaside fishing village.
Here, through the train window, England^s green and pleasant land can be viewed in all her springtime finery. The morning sun is firing up the cherry blossom after the harshest of winters. The sea on the horizon is bathed in the brilliant azure light that can only mean summer is on its way.
Aboard the freshly painted carriages, with newly washed windows sparkling in the sun, the tickets are inexpensive and the staff courteous. In the station buffet, a jolly lady serves freshly cooked breakfast.
^Would you like me to stop the train for you at the next halt, sir?^ asks the guard.
Surely this must be some nostalgic fantasy. Maybe a Thomas the Tank Engine theme park? Or perhaps a jaded commuter^s Monday morning dream? Shhh! I^m going to let you into a secret. This lovely, little-known railway at the extreme fringe of Britain is as much part of the national rail network as the overcrowded and delayed trains that we have all come to hate.
Rip-off fares, unexplained delays, broken toilets, irritating announcements and indigestible catering on our national rail system have all become part of the lexicon of modern British life.
But not everywhere. I came across the Liskeard-Looe line ^ and many other secret delights of our often-maligned rail system ^ during a 30,000-mile odyssey around Britain to find the best rail journeys in the land, as the 50th anniversary of the infamous Beeching Report approaches.
There are few love affairs more intense than that of the British with their railways. As a nation we invented the passenger train, and pride in the great heroes of the Railway Age ^ Stephenson, Trevithick, Brunel ^ runs through our national DNA.
Yet somehow, it always seems to go wrong. No more so than back in 1963 when a plump, balding physicist with an authoritarian moustache and an obsession with the bottom line took an axe to a third of Britain^s rail network.
Richard Beeching had been recruited from the chemicals firm ICI to produce his infamous report, The Reshaping Of British Railways, and his proposals were draconian.
Most ^stopping^ trains ^ those that made slow progress through numerous small stations ^ would be discontinued. Some 2,350 stations would be shut, along with 5,000 miles of track. No area would be spared. Almost all of Devon, Lincolnshire, Cumbria, Wales and the Highlands of Scotland would be robbed entirely of their passenger train services.
The arguments about Beeching still rage on half a century later. Did he deploy his brilliant scientific background to drag an inefficient nationalised industry out of the steam age and into the modern era? Or was he, as the Daily Mail columnist Quentin Letts claimed in a recent book, a ^foolish slasher-and-burner^, who dumped our railway heritage into the bin, like cold leftovers? Either way, the wounds are still raw.
Fortunately for most of us, the Evil Doctor^s brutality did not always prevail, and like the villagers of Titfield in the famous Ealing comedy The Titfield Thunderbolt, communities across the land rose up, fought back and frequently won.
Branches such as the Liskeard to Looe line won a last-minute reprieve. Today many of the loveliest railway journeys across the most scenic and historic landscapes of Britain are still with us, to be enjoyed for the price of an often inexpensive day return.
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Perhaps, though, we should not be over-sentimental, given the many frustrations facing modern-day rail travellers.
The train company that operates the delightful branch lines of Devon and Cornwall is the very same one that runs what are officially the most overcrowded trains in Britain.
I squeezed onto the notorious 07.42 from Reading to London Paddington, which regularly carries 300 passengers more than it is designed for. As one commuter observed: ^There are regulations for transporting sheep and cattle with enough room ^ why not for us?^
In my travels around the network, I encountered other annoyances. Train company websites can be so complex that you need a degree in computer science to get the cheapest fares. I^ve witnessed heartless ticket collectors who mug old ladies with hefty penalty fares when they have left their railcards at home.
I have been dumped with heavy luggage in the middle of nowhere to continue my railway journey by bus because of ^over-running engineering works^.
And why is it that the buffet car still always seems to close before trains heading north from London have reached Watford?
But none of this should be allowed to dim the joy of slow trains as an unrivalled means of getting to the heart of our beautiful land. As the days become longer and the sun gets higher, I^ll be back aboard those little carriages, rumbling through spectacular mountains and pretty seaside villages, through gritty industrial landscapes and gently rolling hills, where there are always new pleasures to be discovered through the train window.