Trains To St Davids

Exeter St Davids station is the most important of seven National Rail stations in the city of Exeter in southwest England. Today the station is owned by Network Rail and operated by First Great Western. Network Rail owns the infrastructure, including the railway tracks, signals, tunnels, bridges, level crossings and most stations, but not the passenger or commercial freight rolling stock.

Network Rail took over ownership by buying Railtrack plc, which was in railway administration, from Railtrack Group plc for 500 million.The purchase was completed on 3 October 2002.The companys headquarters is at Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 after moving on 26 August 2008 from 40 Melton Street, Euston, London. The current Chairman is Sir Ian McAllister, also Chairman of the Carbon Trust and formerly Managing Director of Ford Motor Company Limited. Its chief executive is Iain Coucher.

Its executive board is small. The next railway to arrive at St Davids was the Exeter and Crediton Railway on 12 May 1851, the junction of which was a little distance to the north of the station at Cowley Bridge.

This line was worked by the B and ER and trains were accommodated at the existing platforms. All these railways had been built to the 7 fit (2,140 mm) broad gauge London and South Western Railway (LSWR) brought a line into the station from their own central station in Queen Street. The LSWR owned the Exeter and Crediton Railway and started to work the line for itself, although the broad gauge was retained for the B&ER to work goods trains to Crediton. The main passenger footbridge has many paintings resembling frescoes and depicting romantic versions of rail travel. A second bridge fitted with lifts provides disabled access. When the lifts are out of action an electric golf buggy is used, crossing at track level south of the station.The middle pair of platforms is numbered 3 & 4. The former is used by similar trains to platform 1, but platforms 4-6 do not have access to the lines from Exeter Central. Instead platform 4 is the main platform for inter-city trains to Paignton, Plymouth and Penzance.

The train shed was removed in 1912-13 and the platform extended northwards towards the level crossing.A second island platform was provided on the west side and this entailed the goods sheds being narrowed from two tracks to one at their southern end. The middle island platform was mainly used for LSWR trains while down GWR services used the original main platform and the new island platforms. The station has remained largely in this form since, but resignalling in the 1985 saw the ex-LSWR services moved to the main platform so that down ex-GWR line services did not have to cross their path at the south end of the station. A through line between platforms 1 and 3 was removed at the same time. The new signal box was built on the site of the old atmospheric engine house and replaced three older signal boxes.

There are two direct routes from St Davids to London. The main line is generally considered to be the First Great Western service over the Penzance to London Paddington line,but a there is also a good service operated by South West Trains on their West of England Main Line to London Waterloo. The station is one of the few that have trains to London departing in opposite directions at either end of the station.those to Paddington leave northwards while those to Waterloo head south but turn eastwards just outside the station. Further long-distance services are operated by CrossCountry to Birmingham New Street, the North of England and Scotland.Some of the above trains terminate at St Davids, especially those from Waterloo, roughly one third continue westwards to Paignton, Plymouth, or Penzance. The first part of this journey is along the famous sea wall through Dawlish.

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