Although bought at the auction by December 1935, "Lew" was working for Sidney Castle, the dismantler of the railway. This work was completed by July 1936 and in September, "Lew" was moved by rail to Swansea and then shipped to South America where Lew just disappeared. Despite several searches, no trace of the engine, or clues to what happened to it, have been found.
Sixteen passenger carriages were delivered for the opening. These were of comprised six different types, all the same size, being long, wide, ( over steps) and high – large by narrow gauge standards – and certainly better than any earlier British narrow gauge stock.
The coaching stock was very solidly made, and offered levels of accommodation far better that any others at the time - certainly compared to any other narrow gauge railway. Almost 70 years later, the design was used as the basis for a new set of carriages built by the Ffestiniog Railway, suggesting how good the original design was.
The body for coach 17 was built in 1911 by a local firm, Shapland and Petter, and fitted to a steel underframe made by the railway at Pilton. Slightly longer than the earlier coaches, it had both smoking and non-smoking compartments for first and third class passengers, as well as the brake van space.
The Southern Railway introduced several new goods wagons, and also bought two ex-War Department travelling cranes for the line.
Goods-only trains were not normally used, and usually goods wagons were attached to any passenger trains. The extra work to shunt wagons at stations along the line slowed down the passengers' journey times.
The open goods wagons were originally delivered with a single top-hung side door on each side, but these proved inefficient, and all were eventually converted to side hung double doors. By 1907, most had been fitted with tarpaulin rails. The goods vans used the same underframe, and were fitted with double sliding doors on each side.
Van 23 - now restored and at Woody Bay - was built at Pilton by the L&B. Unlike all other L&B stock, its underframe was entirely made of wood.
The travelling cranes were bought from the War Department, and were fitted with outriggers, they could lift up to 4½ tons. They were intended to be used as recovery cranes if there3 was a derailment, but they were not used much. One crane was kept at Pilton, the other was used in Lynton goods yard.
The 1927 bogie goods vans were originally fitted with heavy diagonal wooden cross braces at each end, but these were later replaced with single diagonal angle-iron braces.
More than seventy-five years after it closed, much of the line can still be seen. The most spectacular is Bridge 22 - the brick-built Chelfham Viaduct, which was fully restored in 2000. Its eight wide arches reach above the Stoke Rivers valley – the largest narrow-gauge railway structure in England.
The stations at Lynton and Bratton Fleming are now private homes, Blackmoor Gate is a restaurant and Barnstaple Town is a school. Chelfham and Woody Bay are both owned by the new L&B. Chelfham station is used for storage, and Woody Bay is the main centre of operations. Snapper Halt was purchased in 2010 by Exmoor Associates - a private company dedicated to securing trackbed for restoring the railway.
Unlike other railways, the track bed was sold off in many pieces - often to the original owners, who paid much less than they had sold it for originally. Although there has been some minor building on parts of the route, and Wistlandpound Reservoir has flooded the track bed close to its middle, much is still in open countryside, with many sections identifiable.
The Lynton & Barnstaple Railway Association (since 2000, a charity) was formed in 1979. Woody Bay Station was bought by the Lynton and Barnstaple Railway Company in 1995 and, after much effort, a short section of railway reopened to passengers in 2004. This was extended to over a mile in 2006, with steam and diesel trains running between Woody Bay and the new, temporary station at Killington Lane Station.
In 1995, the Lynbarn Railway – at the "Milky Way", a theme park near Clovelly, was created and operated by L&B volunteers. Profits from this funded the purchase, restoration and reopening of Woody Bay. The "Lynbarn" was handed over to the park in 2005, once Woody Bay had become established, and continues to operate as part of the attraction.
Most of the original rail vehicles did not survive, but Van 23 is on display at Woody Bay. Coach 7 and Coach 17 are being rebuilt. The remains of several other carriages and Goods Van 4 are being stored ready to be rebuilt. The carriages will then be used as a "Heritage Train" to complement more modern carriages.
Coach 2 was sold and used as a summer house. It is now on show at the National Railway Museum in York, with nameplates from the original engines. Coach 15, recovered from Snapper Halt in 1959 and rebuilt by the Ffestiniog Railway in North Wales, has been running there (now as FR Coach 14) for longer than it did on the L&B. In September 2010, Coach 15 visited the L&B with the "Lew" replica engine, "Lyd".
A "Joffre" class 0-6-0 steam engine built by Kerr Stuart in 1915 was bought in 1983, and named "Axe". Restored to working order in 2008, Axe now pulls most of the passenger trains at Woody Bay. An 0-4-0 engine built by Maffei of Germany in 1925, now named "Sid", is owned by several L&B members, and is also sometimes used on the L&B steam service.
The Trust owns three industrial diesel engines. One of these - Heddon Hall - is some times used in place of the steam engines, and for engineering trains.
A number of other visiting diesel and steam engines have also seen service on the line.
Restoring passenger services from Woody Bay was a major undertaking by the enthusiastic volunteers. Although much of the track bed survives intact, several obstacles – including Wistlandpound Reservoir – must be overcome to restore most of the old route.
In October 2007, the railway announced plans for reinstating enough trackbed to reopen nine miles (14 km) of track, linking the station at Woody Bay to both Lynton (at a new terminus on an extension to the original line, closer to the town) and Blackmoor Gate, and as far as a new station at Wistlandpound.
"Exmoor Enterprise" is likely to cost around £30 million, including the building of replica vehicles and improving the line as an important local tourist attraction.
The railway believes that the scheme will generate over £70 million for the south west economy within five years.
Long-term plans see reopening the line towards Barnstaple.
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Woody Bay railway station
Woody Bay was a station on the old Lynton and Barnstaple Railway, a narrow gauge railway line that ran through Exmoor from Barnstaple to Lynton and Lynmouth in North Devon. The station was inland, about 2 km from Woody Bay itself. It opened with the line (as "Wooda Bay" until the name was changed in 1901) on 7 March 1898, and closed when the line was closed on 29 September 1935. From 1923 until closure, the line was part of the Southern Railway.
Woody Bay station was built in part to serve the expected development of a resort at Woody Bay, a mile or so to the north. A pier was built in the bay, although not much more building took place, and the pier was destroyed by storms before it properly opened.
The development was stopped when the promotor went bankrupt in 1900, and although a route was surveyed for a branch line to the bay, it was never built.
After being bought by the Lynton and Barnstaple Railway Company in 1995, restoration of the station began, and it opened as a Visitors' Centre in 2003. An "out and back" service over a few hundred yards of track began in 2004, and with the opening of a temporary station at Killington Lane, about one mile towards Parracombe Halt, a regular "point to point" service started in 2006.