Richard Cottrell, independent Campaign West candidate for the South West in the European elections, writes:

Government spinners are disingenuous by spreading word that Dawlish and Teignmouth might lose their trains if the diversionary route over the northern rim of Dartmoor prompted closure of the sea wall railway.

This is officialdom typically trying to muddy the issue.

In fact there is no way any government in its right mind would ever survive electorally by depriving traffic hot spots such as Torbay, the South Hams and parts of West Devon access from inter-regional passenger services. No government in possession of its senses would take such a crude Third World approach.'

All governments have been guilty of ignoring the persistent sea wall problem. Storms disrupting services been a continuous problem ever since the famous Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdon Brunel built the line in the 1860s.

Each time there is a storm breach the network operator cleans up the mess until the next time. Then it's the usual case of out of sight, out of mind.

It will never be possible to fix the problem entirely, because we can't control the weather.

But there are solutions which could mitigate the damage, as we move into a cycle of fiercer weather due to climatic change.

What the south west needs is a safe rainy day solution that ensures that whenever the wall is unserviceable, an instant diversionary route – installable now at minimum cost – comes into play.

Government could cheerfully divvy up billions to build a high speed railway to knock a few minutes off the trip from London to Birmingham, but paled at the gills if they asked to put a few millions on the table to plug the 20-mile missing link on the northern Line.

The former Teign valley branch line, shut down in 1967, is not a realistic alternative. Part of the route is now buried beneath the A38. Other sections have been built over or sold off to private occupiers.

It would be far more expensive than reconnecting the northern line, and unsurprisingly generate local opposition.

Of course it should never have closed, as everyone insisted at the time.

The Macmillan Government, through Dr Beeching, was hell bent on shutting everything to feed the car boom. Then Barbara Castle closed another 2,000 miles, more than all the railways in Belgium put together.