Alan Bennett (2)

This slender volume looks at the lines of the London and South Western Railway in the West Country. Devon and Cornwall were regarded as the "home territory" of the Great Western Railway, but the LSWR made a number of inroads into Devon and North Cornwall, and their railways retained the air of a distant outpost of the company. After the 1923 grouping, the Southern Railway tried - and to some extent, succeeded - in generating traffic for these lines with their named holiday season trains to show more the area, the "Atlantic Coast Express", which ran to places such as Ilfracombe, Padstow and Bude.

This book takes a brief look at the Plymouth - Okehampton line, the North Cornwall Railway to Padstow, the Callington branch, and the Bude branch. In the space of 80 pages, we can only get the briefest of views of these lines, and the Bude branch in particular only gets fairly scant coverage. But the book is nicely produced, and is worth acquiring if you have any interest in the railways of the area.

Because it concentrates on the LSWR's lines in the area, mention of the GWR is kept to a minimum. This means that the account of the line between Plymouth and Lydford is a little confused precisely because it ignores the parallel Great Western line. Without knowing of this line's existence, some of the timetables and accounts of early traffic make little sense.

Nonetheless, as the Great Western continues to command so much attention, even 78 years after it formally disappeared from Britain's rails, any account of its rivals in the Far West is welcome, and this book is nicely enough produced to be worth seeking out. I found it sobering to consider this; that up until 1967, I could have stepped out of my front door on the outskirts of Leicester, walked three minutes to my local station, and later that same day (yes, much later, but still) got off a train less than a mile from my late sister's home in the depths of rural Cornwall. Almost as convenient as the car, and far less hassle than the M5 and the A30... show less