DSCN1307 Bakers Dolphin coach in Dartmouth - 14 Jun 2013

Friday 14 June 2013 (1808) – A Bakers Dolphin Van Hool Alizee seen from our room at the Royal Castle Hotel in Dartmouth. I think the coach may have been on a day trip from Weston-super-Mare and was now heading back home. Kingswear can be seen in the background across the River Dart.

The brown and cream building on the extreme left, now a restaurant, was once Dartmouth’s railway station although Dartmouth didn’t have a railway!

Early railway builders were frustrated in their efforts to create a rail link to Dartmouth and so the line from Torbay terminated at Kingswear on the east bank of the River Dart with a ferry connection providing the cross-river link. As home to the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth generated much traffic and so had its own railway station to sell tickets and provide passenger facilities. It is said that the Station Master at Dartmouth was paid more than his counterpart at Kingswear as a result of salaries being paid according to passenger throughput and ticket sales.