“HOOPS, hurdles and elephant traps” aplenty have to be overcome to see a Bideford to Barnstaple rail link reinstated - and that could be at least 13 years away, Torridge councillors have heard.

A meeting of the district council’s external overview and scrutiny committee was told that three business cases costing many millions of pounds needed to be completed for the government to consider bringing the line back and at any point a red flag would cause it to fail.

But campaign group Railfuture has been encouraged by Network Rail placing Bideford second out of 23 station locations in the west that meet initial criteria for reinstatement and is one of five case studies that is being explored further.

Mr Blake said without a doubt the number one question raised by people was what would happen to the hugely popular Tarka Trail walking and cycling route, used by around 600,000 people each year, which runs along part of the trackbed of what was the London and South Western Railway adjacent to the River Taw and Torridge.

He told the meeting that there was “absolutely no interest” in damaging the Tarka Trail as an active travel route and the two things could run in tandem so people could walk, cycle or get the train “unhindered” between Bideford and Barnstaple. It may, however, mean some of the route being diverted.

He said they were two business cases away from doing a detailed design and there were major challenges to overcome not least that there was a major sewerage network that had been built under the trackbed since it was decommissioned.

The build itself would take three years but the preparatory paperwork, investigations and studies would take at least ten, he said.

“There are engineering challenges, some easy, some harder and multiple stages to go through if this thing is to progress to see the light of day and at any point it can get a red flag and everything will stop. We have not had any red flags so far and the next step is to put together a Department of Transport compliant strategic business case, the first of three business cases.”

The first business case would cost a six figure sum, the second a seven figure some and the third an eight figure sum, he said.

“We need to do these as an entry ticket into the rail network enhanced pipeline process. The field we are tentatively playing in is littered with hoops, hurdles and elephant traps all over the place.”

The meeting heard that there was an increasing interest in rail travel and the Tarka Line between Barnstaple and Exeter recorded its best ever passenger in every month of last year.

Upgrades to the line to improve its resilience and increase the frequency of trains and numbers of carriages remains the number one priority of Railfuture’s work in North Devon.

Cllr Claire Hodson (Ind, Westward Ho!) said she was concerned about the cost being “astronomical” to reinstate the Bideford link as it would mean diverting pipework.