‘One day we took £18’ - The café counting the cost of Tarka Line chaos

You may think that every time the Tarka Line is forced into closure because of adverse weather or the need to upgrade its Victorian infrastructure, rail passengers are the only ones affected. 

“We have to shut so it has a massive impact on us.”

These are the words of Mike Day, who runs Station Masters Café at Barnstaple station with his partner Alice.

Mike and Alice have been part of the fabric of Barnstaple station since 2005, opening the café as it stands today in 2008. 

But the problems now blighting the line are nothing new to them.

“All the problems we’re experiencing now were unfortunately known back in sort of 2008, 2009,” Mike said.

“They’re just worse now, because obviously more people are travelling.”

With approximately 98 per cent of their customers being rail passengers, when the trains stop running, the café effectively stops trading.

“There isn’t enough other trade really for us to open normally,” Mike said. 

“We either close or we run for a few hours with very limited options and staffing.”

Staff numbers have fallen from six or seven to around four or five, with hours cut every time a closure hits. 

“We had to change people’s hours,” Mike said. 

“We closed for over a week. It was a significant impact.”

Since November, the toll has been severe. 

“Through floods and the railway being shut, we’ve lost five and a half weeks of trading,” Mike said, “and then we’ve been badly affected for a further three to four weeks on the weeks afterwards, because people don’t trust that the railway is going to work when they say it’s going to work. It takes at least two weeks for people to get back to normal.”

When Storm Chandra brought 24 days of disruption to the line in January, the impact on Station Masters Café was devastating. 

“We closed for, I would say, about seven to nine days,” Mike said.

“We tried to open initially, and I think one day we took about £18. That’s how much of a hit we take. We couldn’t, after the second day, afford to carry on, so we had to close for a period of time.”

The nature of their menu makes closures even more damaging. 

Station Masters Café prides itself on freshly made food prepared on site each day. 

When a storm closes the line without warning, that food cannot always be saved.

“Obviously with something like that, you can’t generally tell it’s going to happen or how bad," Mike said. 

“We’re predominantly fresh food. We make our own sandwiches and wraps and everything. We use what we’ve got, but it will end up at some point with food having to be thrown.”

It seems bus replacement is no replacement at all. 

When the line closes, rail replacement buses are not always available; during Storm Chandra, road conditions were deemed too dangerous to run them. 

But even when buses do operate, Mike says they bring little relief. 

“If buses are running, it’s no good to us. People are kept out the front of the station. We have to shut.”

Poor communication from the railway during closures has compounded the problem. 

“It was a disaster,” Mike said.

“You are literally kind of dealing with an emergency. There was no road transport available, so people were told not to travel under the circumstances which is understandable but then. The railway gave out some really bad communications and told people not to travel, as they couldn’t provide rail replacement because it was too dangerous, yet encouraged them to catch Stagecoach buses which use part of the same route, it made no sense.”

In response to the repeated disruptions, Mike and Alice have introduced delivery partners to help get their food to customers on quieter days; a practical attempt to build income beyond the station’s four walls.

The arrival of social media and live travel apps has also changed customer behaviour in ways that hurt the café even during minor delays.

“It used to be more of a thing because people would be already at the station,” Mike said. “But now with social media, they’re constantly checking apps. They’re aware very quickly if something’s going wrong, so they tend not to be at the station anyway.”

A long-standing issue with the station car park adds further pressure. 

Unlike other stations on the Great Western network, Barnstaple does not offer flexible parking.

“Other railway stations in the Great Western network, they can pay for an hour or all day, but for whatever reason that’s not allowed here,” Mike said. “That in itself has a big impact on us.”

Beyond the immediate struggle to keep his business afloat, Mike has a clear vision of what the Tarka Line needs. 

A half-hourly service, he believes, would transform not just the café but the entire region.

“A half-hourly service or two trains an hour would be game changing for the whole of North Devon,” he said.

“At the moment there’s very much a high level of suppressed demand. North Devon as an area has a very low ridership per capita, and part of that is the sort of not being able to turn up and go. With a half hourly service it becomes much more of an urban metro service, a bit like Bristol or London, where people haven’t got to think, they just turn up and within a short space of time there’s a train. And that in itself encourages people.”

He is realistic about timescales, however.

“It will be eight or nine years before the public really see anything.”

The human cost of the line’s unreliability stretches far beyond lost revenue. 

“When trains haven’t been running in the past, we’ve got people in here literally crying because they’re going to miss their exams, or they’re missing hospital appointments that have waited months,” Mike said.

“You get a lot of people that can’t drive for various perhaps medical reasons, and they’ve got no alternative. It’s a huge thing.”

For Mike, the root cause is straightforward. 

“Unfortunately, because central government overlooks this area — it’s not Bristol, it’s not London, it’s not Manchester — that bill just gets bigger. The work that’s needed gets more and it just gets put back further and further.”

Station Masters Café remains open at Barnstaple station, Monday to Friday from 8am to 3.30pm and Saturday from 8am to 2.30pm.