First Devon and Cornwall in Dartmouth - 13 Jun 2013 (DSCN1260)

Thursday 13 June 2013 (1904) – A First Devon and Cornwall Plaxton President double decker seen from our room at the Royal Castle Hotel in Dartmouth looking across the River Dart to Kingswear.

The bus was now out of service. I think it had worked the 1650 service 93 from Plymouth due here at 1905. It carries the more recent First livery format which includes a local or regional identity – in this case ‘Devon’.

The brown and cream building on the 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.