THE timeframe for completing Okehampton’s second railway station is tight but it is still on course to open in February 2026.

The track design has been completed, and the 200-space car park design and “active travel” elements are now commencing for Okehampton Interchange station, which has secured £13.5 million of levelling up funding.

Vegetation will start to be cleared on site as soon as Natural England has approved a licence that shows the effect on dormice has been considered.

Work on the station has already cost nearly half a million pounds, and a further £5 million is being spent in the current financial year. The remaining £9.5 million will be used in the following 12 months.

The station is expected to be “substantially completed” by November 2025.

The total budget for the project is nearly £15 million with Devon Council Council paying £1.3 million, West Devon £120,000, £50,000 from the Bus Service Improvement Plan and £25,000 from Network Rail.

The borough council is responsible for delivering the station, the single biggest piece of public transport investment in the area for a generation.

It will be built in the Stockley hamlet area of Okehampton, off Exeter Road and near the A30 junction and is expected to reduce traffic in the town centre and relieve pressure on the existing station car park.

Passenger services from Okehampton to Exeter were reinstated in November 2021 and the Dartmoor Line, as it is known, has exceeded expectations, with more than half a million journeys taken in its first two years.

The second station was renamed from Okehampton Parkway to Okehampton Interchange because of links that will be created with buses, walking and cycling routes. It is intended to open up rail access to wider areas of West Devon, Dartmoor and North Cornwall and support housing growth.

The station will consist of a single platform with a footbridge landing in the proposed car park. There will be cycle parking and EV charging points and new cycle routes into town. Bus service timetables will change to link with train times.

Alison Stephenson