Okehampton stn car park (about 70 spaces) is regularly full, with people parking nearby and for free.
But this is good and is what was hoped for and gives further justification for the new Okehampton Parkway, sorry Interchange, station.

This latest points/signals failures/problems in the South West causing cancellation to services and resultant disruption to people’s planned rail journeys today in the Plymouth area and also now at Bridgwater, follows an increasing trend in last few months of such causes of disruption, which all leads to a reduction in reliability confidence by passengers.

Other recent points and signal incidents that come to mind include Exeter St D, N.Abbot, Barnstaple, Bristol Parkway and again Crediton (although RTT^» (Real Time Trains - website) coded this OC = Signaller Error)
Is there a fundamental cause eg shortage of skilled staff /reorganisation/reviews of testing and mtce. procedures, delays in getting spares etc.

What a pity it’s taken these D&CRP^▸ (Community Rail Partnership) inspired TT improvements (and resultant train operating cost reductions) so long to be implemented; it should have happened several years ago.

Add Torrington (Tarka^▸ (Branch line from Barnstaple to Exeter) Valley Rly - Heritage)
Add Bideford (Rly Heritage Centre)
Add Christow (Rly Centre of Excellence)

17 Morchard Road
      Those concrete sleepers are about 70 yrs old !

What please is the relevance of this subject with regards to Rail / GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) services/ this rail passengers discussion and rail information site ?

3. Okehampton’s only connected and operational platform is No.3, the former Up main platform.
The tracks of the former and still signed plats 1 and 2, looked after by the small band of station friends, stretch west into the overgrowing wilderness of hope and despair.

In the next few weeks many Rail Freight Staff will be paid to stay at home, through lack of work/trains to run.
The Construction and many other businesses  shutdown for two weeks or so over Christmas/New Year.

Under BR^▸ (British Rail(ways))/ a joined up railway these staff would have had great flexibility and been used to fill uncovered turns resulting in far fewer cancelled passenger trains.

On the face of it, it’s rather surprising that an emergency hourly TT for the many hundreds of commuters etc to Bath and Bristol has not been planned to run between Trowbridge and Bristol TM^▸ (Train Manager, or Ticket Machine, or Temple Meads (Bristol), depending on context) and VV serving all stations, with trains running empty between Trowbridge and Westbury North to cross over.

8. All had GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) Hotels.

3C = Tom Hanks

3B = Colonel Holman Stephens

According to Real Time Trains the 1725 Oke left on time, struggled and arrd Crediton 66 late and St D 69 late.

The  2115 St D actually ran and left on time and is currently braving the 13 mile ‘high Risk Tree Tunnel’ from Coleford to Okehampton, the highest rly stn in Southern England at about 720 feet above sea level.

Rather surprisingly with the main line closed between Plymouth and N.Abbot from approx 1130 Sunday until early today ‘due flooding between Ivybridge and Totnes’ ( at again ? S. Brent rail over river Avon Bdge with an unresolved river bed scour problem ? ) that two NR^» (Network Rail - home page) Engineers trains were allowed to run through operated by the Freightliner FOC^▸ (Freight Operating Company, or possibly 'free of charge', depending on context); the 1500 Goonbarrow ( ex Nqy) to Westbury and the 1007 Westbury to Goonbarrow (for Nqy ).

This is regretfully nothing new and has been going on intermittently for several weeks; thus giving misleading and confusing information to passengers on the information screens on stations and scrolling screens on local trains.
GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) and its Contractors seem unable to completely rectify these problems.