00:00Good morning everybody and thank you Joe and Jackie and Mandy and everybody for coming this morning.
00:05It was 55 years ago that a final train left Oakhampton for Exeter and with it I think went a
00:13lot of dreams and a lot of hopes.
00:16But fast forward to today and boy have things changed for the better.
00:20Oakhampton has not just one station now, it has two.
00:24It has one to the west, it has this one to the east.
00:28And I'm sure it won't be long before there is a campaign to have a third station in the middle
00:32to look after the people that are inconvenienced by having to go to either the west or to the east.
00:39But look, this is a fantastic opportunity for this town and the wider region.
00:44It brings together that connectivity of cycling, of walking to the station, of driving to the station, of drawing people
00:50in from the wider area.
00:52And of course we already know that since 2021 all the records have been broken.
00:59We've got four to five hundred thousand passenger journeys from Oakhampton to Exeter on an annual basis.
01:05That is a massive, massive achievement.
01:08And I wanted to echo some of the thanks that have already been made this morning and quite rightly so.
01:14Thanks to Network Rail, thanks to GWR, thanks to the Borough Council, to Devon County Council, thanks to the Department
01:23of Transport.
01:24And I remember working, I brought two Secretaries of State for Transport down here, one of whom I actually forced
01:28to walk the line between here and Melbourne Quarry
01:31to reinforce the importance of getting more infrastructure.
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