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For just over 100 years Launceston was connected to the national rail network and for much of that time it was serviced by two stations, the Great Western Railway (Launceston and South Devon) and Southern Railways (London and South Western). The fight to enable this connection was a hard fought one, but once connected in 1865, the town began to prosper. However, the town had little to celebrate on its centenary as the year before the death knell had been sounded and Launceston became one of the many statistics of the ‘Beeching’ axe. The following pages are a story on the railway’s life from its early beginnings to the final curtain on October 5th 1966.
The London and South Western railway
The life of the ‘Withered Arm’
Railway schemes that never made it
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