Sunday 1st May 2011 marks the 150th anniversary of the opening of the Exeter-Exmouth railway (now known as the Avocet Line). See the Avocet Line Rail Users Group website www.avocet150.co.uk.
Among general themed events, the line's history is commemorated in a number of specifically historical talks and exhibitions: see the calendar. There's a good overview at the ALRUG site here.
If you have access to the 19th century British Library Newspapers archive, Trewman's Exeter Flying Post or Plymouth and Cornish Advertiser for Wednesday, May 1, 1861, is interesting reading. Events took place all along the line, and that in Exmouth was one of the largest celebrations ever seen in the town. The four-column front-page spread begins:
OPENING
of the
EXETER AND EXMOUTH
RAILWAY
May Day, 1861, will for the future rank as one of the brightest Red Letter Days in the annals of Exmouth. It is the day on which the long-deferred hope of the principal of its inhabitants has at last been realised—the day on which, after more than sixteen years' patience and struggling with a series of rare difficulties—difficulties such as few lines have had to contend with—the wild expectations of 1845 have been consummated.
- RG
Avocet Line: 150 years of railway history
