should the railway fail. Instead, it purchased the line itself in 1973 and leased back the operational land to the West Somerset Railway Company plc. The proposed commuter service never materialised, due to traffic restrictions between the newly installed Taunton Cider Company sidings at and Taunton, but the line was slowly reopened as a heritage railway. Minehead to Blue Anchor was the first section to see trains restored, opening on 28 March 1976 and services were extended to Williton on 28 August the same year. Trains returned to Stogumber on 7 May 1978 and they reached Bishops Lydeard on 9 June 1979. A new station at was opened on the coast east of Watchet on 27 June 1987 to serve a holiday camp at Helwell Bay. In 2004, work started on constructing a new triangle at Norton Fitzwarren which included a part of the old Devon and Somerset line, and a ballast reclamation depot opened there in 2006. In 2008, a new turntable was brought into use at Minehead. A new station opened on 1 August 2009 at Norton Fitzwarren on a new site a short distance north of the main line. During 2007 a regular service ran from Minehead to Taunton and on a couple of days each week. Known as the Minehead Express, it was aimed at holidaymakers travelling to Butlins at Minehead. It left Minehead at 11:10 and Bristol at 14:06 with Victa Westlink's s 31452 and 31454 powering the five coaches. 31128 was available as a spare locomotive but was not used on the service trains. The first of these trains ran on 20 July and operated on a total of 18 days, finishing on 27 August. Whilst the freehold of the line continues to be owned by Somerset County Council, during 2013 it was announced that both the WSRA and the WSR plc had approached the county council about the possibility of purchasing the freehold of the line. The council made the decision in late May 2014 not to sell the freehold after all. A May 2018 county transport strategy acknowledged that there were plans to reintroduce services between Taunton and Minehead. Following an inspection by the Office of Rail and Road in 2018, it was announced that the railway would close from 2 January 2019, and would reopen on 1 April. The inspection found that several safety improvements needed to be made. The line