Plymouth to Yealmpton Branch

The Plymouth to Yealmpton Branch was a Great Western Railway single track branch railway line in Devon, England, that ran from Plymstock to Yealmpton. The line was planned as part of a route to Modbury, but the scheme was cut back to Yealmpton; it opened in 1898, and the passenger train service ran from Plymouth Millbay, but road competition led to declining usage and the passenger service was withdrawn in 1930.

During heavy air raids in 1941 many Plymouth workers preferred to find accommodation outside the city, and in 1941 the passenger service was reinstated, transferring to Plymouth Friary as the terminal. This service ceased in 1947 and the goods service on the line finished in 1960.

The broad gauge group of companies, called the Associated Companies, had early on established main line primacy in the Plymouth area, the South Devon Railway having reached the city in 1849. The rival London and South Western Railway (LSWR) had long had ambitions to reach the city, and its trains first entered Plymouth in 1876. However this was not entirely satisfactory, as the trains had to run over the South Devon Railway's Tavistock line for the final approach to Plymouth, and work started on an independent line in 1887, through the medium of a friendly company, the Plymouth, Devonport and South Western Junction Railway.

Seeing that it was now in sight of establishing itself in the city, the LSWR planned a large Plymouth terminal, which became Plymouth Friary station and goods depot, and it acquired a moribund mineral line, the Plymouth and Dartmoor Railway (P&DR), and through it obtained an Act of Parliament authorising the Turnchapel Branch.

The Associated Companies had by this time amalgamated and become the Great Western Railway (GWR), and these competing developments were alarming to it. Now a South Hams Railway, branching from the Turnchapel branch and running through Yealmpton to Modbury, was authorised by Act of 22 June 1888. The GWR feared its extension to Torbay and Exeter, areas it considered to be its own.

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