{"id":7809,"date":"2024-09-30T15:45:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-30T14:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.teignrail.co.uk\/scouting\/?p=7809"},"modified":"2025-07-20T23:28:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T22:28:10","slug":"exeter-to-taunton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.teignrail.co.uk\/scouting\/exeter-to-taunton\/","title":{"rendered":"111 Exeter to Taunton"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

These 31 miles of line are undoubtedly the most travelled by the scout, either on their own or as part of longer journeys.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exeter (St. David’s)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
The view east from the top end of Platform One in June, 1963.
The Red Cow crossing attendant, usually a green-carded man, looks out for pedestrians, who were able to cross while the road gates were closed; and can still do so today when the barriers are down.
The former Railway Clearing House building is at left. Middle Signal Box is squeezed between the Up Relief and the shed road. The attendant’s hut is by the door.
The Transfer Shed and later extension is at centre.
An engine stands in the banking spur connected to the lines used by Southern trains. Another engine moves to the rear of a train in Platform Three or on the Down Main. The siding had an unusual “scotch block,” a great lump of iron that was swung up onto the rail, in place of a trap point.
Ward & Co’s. store is seen at right, and beyond, other traders’ premises are visible on Cowley Bridge Road.
The line at right leads to Platform Two, the Exe Valley Bay, and “Hyde Park” siding.
From right to left, the lines are: Down Platform; Down Main; Down Middle; Up Middle; Up Main; Up Relief and shed road. The track layout was heavily rationalized when Multiple Aspect Signalling was installed in 1985. The Down through line was taken up and the Down Middle became the Down Main.
The Transfer Shed is the only railway building in this picture which remains.
There used to be no public right of way over the two crossings – Exwick Crossing over the goods yard and avoiding lines is off picture at left – and it was said that they were closed once a year to prove possession.
A pre-war northern bypass was taking shape which would have been carried over the railway, perhaps between Middle Box and the Transfer Shed, on a flyover. Prince of Wales Road would have been linked with Valley Road in Exwick, which it is thought was built for this purpose. Exwick Road, Buddle Lane and Cowick Lane had all been straightened and widened.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Parcels Traffic<\/a> contains views of the bay platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Long gone are the days when the crack Limited <\/em>(“Cornish Riviera Express”) used to run non-stop to Plymouth; and a grand sight it made going at speed through St. David’s, the hardest work for its immaculate “King” lying ahead, with the unassisted ascents of Dainton and Rattery, for which it would need to pick up water from the troughs at Exminster. Latterly, one of the few occasions when the back board (distant) came off was for the train of 22 empty Polybulks all the way from Switzerland to Cornwall, which, not needing relief, would hurtle through at 55 m.p.h. Another use for the through road was for Southern Up freights to attach their banking engines. I would step out some mornings to watch a pair of howling “Thousands” (Class 52s) work the Westbury to Exeter Central cement up the bank. Crikey, it would make you weep if that sight could be recreated. But the diesels have gone; so has the cement; and the through road is just bare ballast.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From “Twenty-One Years with British Rail,” E. & T.V.R., 1995.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Looking from New North Road, in the distance can be seen the station platforms and the remains of the structure which once carried part of the overall roof. Red Cow Crossing passes in front of the platforms.
The Grade II listed Transfer Shed stands forlornly at centre. Exeter was at the extent of the narrow (standard) gauge and goods consigned further west had, if carried in narrow gauge wagons, to be transhipped into broad gauge ones. The narrow and broad openings can be seen. The most recent scheme to find a new purpose for the building was scuppered by Network Rail.
The new building behind it is the Traction Maintenance Depot<\/a>. It occupies the site of the Goods Shed and much of Old Yard, the original goods yard. A few truncated lines remain to the east of what was Exwick Crossing; a track maintenance machine stands in one of them; to the right of it is the remainder of the Up and Down Goods avoiding lines.
In the foreground, alongside Cowley Bridge Road, is the former New Yard, built to provide additional capacity and to allow traders’ premises to be directly served. A track maintenance depot, kept as scruffily as the rest of the railway estate, occupies some of the yard today.
Since the demise of British Rail’s Speedlink <\/em>service more than 30 years ago, not a ton of revenue-earning freight traffic has been handled here. The track authority and the train operators do not use rail transport for their stores and consumables.
Once, four signal boxes would have been seen from here. Two would have been in picture: Exeter Middle and Exeter Goods Yard; Exeter East and Exeter Riverside Yard lay off picture to the right. +<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The goods avoiding lines originally had junctions at Exeter East and Exeter West; Taunton’s equivalent boxes were named East Junction and West Junction.
As a wartime measure, Riverside Yard was built on waste ground between the main line and the river, the goods lines were extended to Cowley Bridge. Italian prisoners of war helped to lay the seven through sidings of the new marshalling yard. The signal box, opened in 1943, stood roughly at centre.
In 1965, upon the closure of Hackney (Newton Abbot) as a marshalling yard, six single-ended sidings were added in what was known as “the field”; prior to this, a siding had been slewed as required to allow tipping of spoil.
East Box, now off picture at left, was closed in 1973 and the connections to the avoiding lines and New Yard were taken out.
Two more sidings were added to Riverside in the late 1970s, bringing the total to 15.
Riverside ceased to be a marshalling yard after the demise of Speedlink. <\/em>Since denationalization, the track has been heavily rationalized and now principally serves as an aggregate depot. Thousands of tons of stone are brought each week from the Mendip quarries, which is then hauled over a busy level crossing and along residential roads.
Two trains of VTG,<\/em> 77-tonne capacity hoppers, new from the Polish manufacturer in 2024, are standing in what could be roads 12 & 13. Redundant power station coal hoppers stand at right in No. 3 or 4 of the original yard. +<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Cowley Bridge Junction<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The junction of two turnpikes and the confluence of two rivers was not the best place to introduce the junction of two double lines of railway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A turnaround of the arrangement at St. David\u2019s, it is here left to Plymouth and right to London.
Before the railway was built, the Barnstaple turnpike made a junction with the Tiverton road in front of the Cowley Bridge Inn (now closed) at right.
In June, the scout began following the North Devon line from the bridge at Cowley, but for this piece he took the Exe Valley turnpike which goes to the right of the old inn.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n
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A “King” accelerates the “Cornish Riviera Express” past the junction in the 1950s.
Cowley Bridge Junction Box is at left.
The river bridges can be seen as they were before the diversion work in the 1960s, when the North Devon line was singled.
Replacement switches await an engineer’s possession.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Flooding at Cowley Bridge Junction.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since the above piece was written, the Environment Agency has raised the city\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cowley Bridge Junction Floods<\/a> is a film which explains in great detail what was done here by railway engineers in the mid-1960s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scout’s coverage of the Exe Valley Branch<\/a> opens with shots taken from the carriage between Cowley and Stafford Bridge, and at North Bridge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stafford’s Bridge<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The O.S. marks it as Stafford Bridge.<\/p>\n\n\n

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From the Exe’s flood plain, the railway is seen sweeping towards the bridge, off picture at right.
Grade II* listed Pynes, the former home of the Earl of Iddesleigh, nestles on the valley side at right.
Exeter’s water treatment works of the same name can just be seen below the second pylon.
The transmitter at Whitestone pokes above the hill behind the third pylon. +<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n