Operations
When the branch opened there were six return journeys every weekday—eight from 1907; in 1908 there were nine, of which two were goods trains and one was mixed. Summer Sunday trains were put on from 1930, and this peaked at eleven in 1938. The winter Sunday service was discontinued in 1951.
During the post-war years, the branch engines alternated, returning to and from Exmouth Junction locomotive shed (near Exeter) piloting a scheduled main line passenger or goods train. At the weekend in summer, the second engine arrived in time to assist with the heavy traffic. Through carriages from and to London trains were marshalled at Axminster, and both locomotives operated heavier trains—up to six coaches—over the branch itself.
As mentioned above, Combpyne was provided with a signal box from July 1906; Phillips refers to the station having a single platform, but also a passing loop. The signal box was closed—actually reduced to ground frame status—from 12 August 1921 and the loop became a siding.
Maggs says that this took place on 17 June 1930 and Mitchell and Smith say that the signal box and the northern points were removed in 1930 and the loop became single ended.
On 27 March 1960, the signalling system on the line reverted to "one engine in steam", with the Lyme Regis signal box being reduced to ground frame status.
Read more about this topic: Lyme Regis Branch Line
Famous quotes containing the word operations:
“You can’t have operations without screams. Pain and the knife—they’re inseparable.”
—Jean Scott Rogers. Robert Day. Mr. Blount (Frank Pettingell)
“A sociosphere of contact, control, persuasion and dissuasion, of exhibitions of inhibitions in massive or homeopathic doses...: this is obscenity. All structures turned inside out and exhibited, all operations rendered visible. In America this goes all the way from the bewildering network of aerial telephone and electric wires ... to the concrete multiplication of all the bodily functions in the home, the litany of ingredients on the tiniest can of food, the exhibition of income or IQ.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“Plot, rules, nor even poetry, are not half so great beauties in tragedy or comedy as a just imitation of nature, of character, of the passions and their operations in diversified situations.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)