These 31 miles of line are undoubtedly the most travelled by the scout, either on their own or as part of longer journeys.
He must have ridden behind steam engines with his parents. Diesel hydraulics hauled the trains that took him to and from his boarding school in Taunton. He has since enjoyed diesel electrics, H.S.T’s. and D.M.U’s, often choosing to stand at an open window to observe all the very familiar landmarks.
Finally, at the end of his life, he has had to witness the worst abominations ever put on rail: electric trains which have to carry around diesel engines and tanks of gas oil; and whose bodywork is already corroding and fatiguing.
Since the above piece was written, the Environment Agency has raised the city’s flood defences and these now extend upstream to Cowley Bridge. A channel has also been made beneath the G.W. main line just east of the junction.
Cowley Bridge Junction Floods is a film which explains in great detail what was done here by railway engineers in the mid-1960s.
The scout’s coverage of the Exe Valley Branch opens with shots taken from the carriage between Cowley and Stafford Bridge, and at North Bridge.
Stafford’s Bridge
The O.S. marks it as Stafford Bridge.
In making his way around to North Bridge, the scout stopped on the bridleway leading from Woodrow Barton to Burridge Road and looked across the valley.
The scout stopped here in 2020 on a ride to Silverton.
Sandy Lane Crossing
This foot crossing was closed for several years and was not immediately reopened, even when work had been done to improve it, including the installation of warning lights.
Rewe Bridge
The “vee” of the turnpike and railway beside the camera in the first picture above was once the base of Munro Plant. The scout was at prep with Clive Munro, the owner’s son.
Columbjohn Bridge
The road here shortly passes over the older Paddleford Bridge across the Culm, whose valley the railway follows.
Many years ago, when the scout came off late turn at St. David’s, he would ride the Exe Valley in the dark, sometimes as far as Tiverton, just for fun. He remembers being on this bridge on a still evening and hearing the milk accelerating away from Cowley behind a Thousand. The closely, almost uniformly, spaced axles of Miltas (telegraphic code for milk tanks) gave the trains an unmistakable sound. Even on continuously welded rail, a slightly inaccurate weld would have the same effect as a joint. Seeing the 1640 St. Erth or the 1730 Lostwithiel (there were two trains some evenings) pass here at 60 m.p.h., with West Country milk for London breakfast tables, gave a young lad the feeling that he belonged to an industry that was doing something useful. It was one of his jobs to advise the Milk Controller at Paddington of the formation leaving Exeter, where portions from Chard, Torrington, Lapford and Hemyock may have been attached to tanks already picked up at Totnes.
Paddleford Bridge has a distorted arch, but this should not worry passengers as a three-tonne restriction has been imposed.
In the railway’s campaign against the demolition of a bridge on the Teign Valley route, the scribe drew attention to Paddleford as an example of real risk. This letter has a view of the distorted arch.
The scout continued from Clysthayes and turned onto Strathculm Road, which enters Hele very near what must once have been the main entrance to the paper mill.
A little way beyond the M5 bridge over Station Road, on the right, bordering the old A38 and rather hidden from view, is railway activity of a kind. Leaky Finders Ltd. is a heritage steam specialist company. The scout joined a Devonshire Association visit to the workshops in November, 2023, and enjoyed looking at the innards of antiquated engines.
The scout left the turnpike and followed Waters Lane as far as the railway bridge.
Nag’s Head Bridge
The turnpike bridges the railway here, on the approach to Cullompton. It crosses back at Willand. Another crossing is made above Whiteball Tunnel and then at Beam Bridge. The motorway stays to the east of the railway between Exeter and Taunton.
Cullompton Station
All the fanciful talk of the 1990s amounted to nothing and the goods yard became a tawdry motorway services station.
With Wellington and Cullompton becoming housing growth towns in the new century, and by far the largest settlements between Taunton and Exeter, proposals to reopen their stations now had greater justification. It seemed that the government award of £5-million in 2021 to work up plans for Wellington and Cullompton almost guaranteed that they would be built, but in 2024 the new Labour administration, discovering that the country was broke, announced a review of all railway schemes.
The far newer £34-million road scheme, a relief road linking Station Road with Meadow Lane (effectively, with Millennium Way, completing a second Cullompton bypass) and another motorway junction, is at the same time gathering pace.
Beyond Cullompton, the line leaves the Culm Valley and climbs to Willand.
Tiverton Junction
Dean Hill Road from the bridge once led towards the end of Station Road. It was severed by the motorway and the new Lloyd Maunder Road was made to the gate of the factory and continued to the former passenger and goods entrance on Station Road.
The scout had passed the factory gate three times before in 2024 and had eyed the private railway bridge from which he was sure the best view of the former station could be obtained, but he had shrunk from stopping at the gatekeeper’s office.
On the fourth ride past, still certain that he knew what the answer would be, the scout thought he would ask anyway whether it would be possible to take a photograph from the bridge.
A burly security officer came to the window and said politely that it could not be permitted. Seeing the scout downcast, however, the fellow then advised that if the enthusiast were to send a wire, it might be possible for him to be escorted onto the bridge.
Even though he would not have had much intention of acting on it, the scout enquired whom he should contact. Security was about to jot down the address when he spotted someone in authority by the gate. “Just a minute,” he said, as he left from the back of the office and waited his turn to confer with the man.
The scout felt himself being observed before the man came towards him with outstretched hand and introduced himself as Geoff. The scout had not appreciated the concern that he may have been a protester or an “animal rights” activist.
On the bridge, before he returned to his office, what the scout later learnt was the General Manager, Geoff Pugsley, told the scout that he remembered catching trains from the former station.
After thanking him for his kindness, the scout walked back to the gate with security who told the scout that the factory and the houses opposite were still owned by Lloyd Maunder – the brothers had called in recently – and that a million hens a week were slaughtered.
Having just read Simon Fairlie’s recollections of life in the 1950s, the scout was able to say that chicken, being expensive. was once only enjoyed at Christmas and Easter and that beef was the staple.
“AF” and “FM” insulated containers, used by Lloyd Maunder, are often mentioned in the G.W.R. Letter Register which came from Tiverton Junction and was later kept as a Visitors’ Book in the railway’s Camping Van at Christow.
Willand’s god-awful housing estates, centred on the old A38, give the impression of a new settlement but the heart of the old village can be found, about a mile from the former station.
Muxbeare Lane, off the old A38 north of Willand, goes towards the motorway. At great expense, a path has been made from here to Tiverton Parkway.
A permissive path follows the Spratford Stream beneath the dual carriageway and across the fields. The artists’ “gallery” beneath the A361 must only be seen by a few.
The line can be followed using quiet lanes or the Grand Western Canal, which is less than three quarters of a mile from the station.
Pugham Crossing
The scout photographed Pugham Crossing in 2018. He has only a vague memory of seeing the gates and hut while on his way to and from school in the early 1970s.
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The E. & T.V.R. scout, having on occasion sent a few photographs to the esteemed elders of the Cornwall Railway Society, in time rather got into the habit after his outings of submitting a short story, often under the general heading of “Route Learning” or “Route Refresher.”. Read more