inspector on a second junction at the divergence of the Brighton and Epsom lines. It is not clear what this refers to, and may simply have been a rationalisation of the timing of a painful decision. Whatever the reason, there was to be no more atmospheric work on the LB&SCR. South Devon Railway Getting authorisation The Great Western Railway (GWR) and the Bristol and Exeter Railway working collaboratively had reached Exeter on 1 May 1844, with a broad gauge railway connecting the city to London. Interested parties in Devonshire considered it important to extend the connection to Plymouth, but the terrain posed considerable difficulties: there was high ground with no easy route through. After considerable controversy, the South Devon Railway Company (SDR) obtained its Act of Parliament authorising a line, on 4 July 1844. Determining the route The Company's engineer was the innovative engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. He had visited the Dalkey line and he had been impressed with the capabilities of the atmospheric system on that line. Samuda had always put forward the advantages of his system, which (he claimed) included much better hill climbing abilities and lighter weight on the track. This would enable a line in hilly terrain to be planned with steeper than usual gradients, saving substantial cost of construction. If Brunel had decided definitely to use the atmospheric system at the planning stage, it would have allowed him to strike a route that would have been impossible with the locomotive technology of the day. The route of the South Devon Railway, still in use today, has steep gradients and is generally considered "difficult". Commentators often blame this on it being designed for atmospheric traction; for example: Sekon, describing the topography of the line, says that beyond Newton Abbot, the conformation of the country is very unsuitable for the purpose of constructing a railway with good gradients. This drawback did not at the time trouble Mr. Brunel, the engineer to the South Devon Railway Company, since he proposed to work the line on the atmospheric principle, and one of the advantages claimed for the system being that steep banks were as easy to work as a level. The line "was left with a legacy of a line built for atmospheric working with the consequent heavy gradients and sharp curves". Brunel "seriously doubted the ability of any engine to tackle the kind of gradients which would be