Welcome to Halwill Junction - the Clapham Junction of the South West.

1.6 miles and 5 minutes east of Halwill village itself, here's a little community which has ended up with a title that must baffle every motorist who passes through on the A3079. And you could, quite easily, pass through en-route to Bude or Exeter, or Padstow or Bideford, and never have the mystery explained.

Because these days, you'll only pass through by road.

Fifty years ago, you could have come here to catch a train to any of those destinations, in fact any destination in the country with a few changes along the way. No longer.

Halwill Junction station was built in the middle of nowhere. A geographical convenience, it landed on the spot where four railway lines - from Okehampton to the east, from Torrington to the north, and from Bude and Padstow to the west - happened to meet. It was never intended to serve anybody except those who'd arrived by train looking for a connection, and its understated building and two-and-a-half platforms say nothing of just how important a junction this would have been. These weren't branch lines intersecting here, but main lines which ultimately connected Devon and Cornwall with London.

A small community built up around the station, and whilst all four lines fell under the Beeching axe in the mid-1960s, the "Halwill Junction" name lived on.

And it's not the only name that's stuck.

Developers seem to be fond of these crass backhanders, don't they, a way of triumphantly marking their territory; how many woodland housing estates are called "Badgers Copse", after the poor little blighters buried beneath the tarmac?

Happily, there are still some reminders of what made The Junction great. The trackbeds of at least two of the routes are easily picked out as they approach the site, and after some serious ferreting in the undergrowth (in what is now a nature reserve... now who's out for the badgers?), I'm both happy and astonished to report that the downward slope of the half-platform remains beyond the housing estate.

And, of course, The Junction Inn, a splendid pub where I received the warmest of welcomes on one of 2009's coldest days. Spotting the 1950s railway map tucked under my arm, I was immediately treated by locals to a few reminiscences about the line, the station and all that it meant to them. The landlord is apparently making a model of the Junction station, which he's promised to bring down "next time (I) visit".

My day in Halwill Junction at least ended with a meeting of minds, if not lines.

Post title from the Squeeze song of the same name, which also mentions Clapham, and which appeared on Radio 2 as I pulled up outside the station site. Once again we conclude that radio is not made merely by men, but by magic...

We must also acknowledge the late Sir John Betjeman, who I always like to think would approve of me and my life, and therefore wouldn't mind my extension of his idea: he once described the marvellous Evercreech Junction in Somerset as "The Clapham Junction of the West". Its parallel with Halwill as a remote junction station whose name transcends the railway itself is one you'll read about here soon.