The 7 miles of the railway now known as the South Devon Railway originally ran from Ashburton to Totnes (where it joins the Plymouth to Exeter main line) a distance of some 9 miles. The line had a difficult birth as there were several schemes put forward in the mid 1800's to link the towns of Buckfastleigh and Ashburton to the fast growing railway network. The main route from Exeter to Plymouth was being constructed by the South Devon Railway Company, incorporated in 1844. It was engineered by the builder of the Great Western Railway, Isambard Kingdom Brunel and built to his Broad Gauge (7ft 0¼ inch) specification. A group of local promoters came up with a plan to link Ashburton to Newton Abbot and in 1848 a Bill for a 10½ mile branch received the Royal Assent. Brunel was asked to be the engineer for the line and he produced an estimate of £103,500 for its construction. Unfortunately, with the economy in recession at the time no work was started and the plan was dropped. Eventually another scheme, also to be built to Brunel's broad gauge, this time along the valley of the River Dart linking up with the South Devon Railway at Totnes was agreed upon, the line opened on 1st May 1872 as the Buckfastleigh, Totnes and South Devon Railway. Due to financial difficulties the original South Devon Railway was subsequently taken over by the Great Western Railway in 1876. The line being converted to Stephenson's Standard Gauge (4ft 8½ inches) along with the rest of the Great Western Railway network, over one weekend in 1892, a massive undertaking involving a large workforce.

 The line's history is a quiet one and it is a sobering thought that the Ashburton branch, along with many other rural branch lines, never made a profit. Goods traffic, mainly coal, wool, cider and agricultural items were the lifeblood of the line and such was the volume of goods traffic that an extension had to be built to the goods shed at Buckfastleigh in 1906. Continuing to run through two, World Wars, nationalised in 1948, the decline came to a head on 3rd November 1958 when the last passenger train ran, before even Dr. Beeching came on the scene. Freight however, continued until 7th September 1962 when that finally dwindled to nothing.

Also in 1962 the local press had revealed that a group of businessmen were working on a plan to reopen the line. They saw the running of a steam operated branch line, in the GWR style, in a popular tourist area, as a potentially profitable enterprise and so the Dart Valley Railway Ltd was born. On the 2nd October the first rolling stock arrived but the first passenger trains did not run until 5th April 1969 due to difficulties in obtaining a Light Railway Order from the then Ministry of Transport. The last 2 miles of the line to Ashburton were severed some years later at the time of the improvements to the A38 trunk road which passes to the north of our Buckfastleigh site .

By the end of 1989 the Dart Valley Railway Company had determined that the line had become uneconomic and in 1990 decided to try to find another operator. The volunteers who had been operating the line realised this was now their chance to form a company to take over the railway but this would have to be a charitable trust in order to reduce the costs sufficiently to make the line pay. However, it proved extremely difficult for the volunteers to form such a body in such a short space of time but there was already at Buckfastleigh a company with charitable status, the Dumbleton Hall Locomotive Ltd, (restoring GWR locomotive No. 4920 Dumbleton Hall). It had within its Articles of Association a clause which allowed it to run a railway so it took over the lease of the Buckfastleigh branch on 1st January 1991. The Company was renamed the South Devon Railway Trust (a charitable educational trust) and the railway is now known as the South Devon Railway. The Trust relies heavily on volunteer members of the railways own support group the South Devon Railway Association for the successful day to day operation of the railway