The Railway Brew House, Newton Abbot

Made a last minute decision to stop in here before catching my outbound train, having read in the local CAMRA magazine that the pub had recently changed hands and cask ale was being made a priority. The ‘Brew House’ part of the pub’s name is rather redundant these days, as the pub no longer has ties to the Platform 5 Brewery, but there was nevertheless a decent cask selection when I called in, with options on the pumps comprising Exmoor Gold, Taylor Landlord, Exeter Avocet, Dartmoor Jail Ale and Draught Bass, with a tower of cider boxes visible on the bar back as well. I gave the Jail Ale a try and thought it was in pretty good nick, but with a modest Thursday evening crowd in attendance, I’d have some reservations about the sustainability of five cask ales. The pub itself is a fairly simple, single room set-up, with a carpeted seating area to the left and the main bar space centre and right. You enter through a pleasant set of doors with etched glass panes bearing the name ‘The City Brewery Ales’ in the screens either side of the door. The bar is to the rear and has a traditional panelled counter front and a brightly lit, mirrored bar back with some old promotional barrel ends for the Platform 5 Brewery stuck on the canopy above. There’s also a train departures board at one end of the bar, which is a nice touch, allowing you to leg it to the neighbouring station at the last possible minute. The room is very brightly lit – a matter that is not helped by the grey lincrusta lower wall sections, topped with dazzling white uppers. Seating comes almost exclusively in the form of basic tables and chairs, supplemented by a couple of benches in the rear left corner, next to a dark wood framed fireplace with a stack of the aforementioned CAMRA magazines on top, a steam train painting above and a dartboard to one side. The pub’s most memorable feature though, was undoubtedly the two large TV’s and one huge pull-down screen, each of which were showing muted wrestling with a middling 70’s pop soundtrack playing in the background. A couple of the locals seemed to be glued to the onscreen action, but it did dominate the room and didn’t exactly leave a favourable impression. You can avoid such distractions by sitting on one of the picnic tables out the front, which overlook the station car park and taxi rank and there is also a garden of sorts down some stairs to the rear, but there’s no seating – just a few upturned barrels to stand around and the outdoor toilet block. This was a bit of a strange one – a pub that’s trying to push cask ale whilst simultaneously showing wall-to-wall American wrestling doesn’t seem like an obvious recipe for success, but maybe this isn’t representative of the average visit here. It seems pretty friendly and tidy, doing considerably better than plenty of other station-side pubs I’ve been in around the country, but it’s not a must-visit as things stand and is best checked out if you’ve some time to kill before catching a train.

Unsurprisingly the Railway is located next to Newton Abbot Railway Station so is very handy for a pre/post journey pint. This is an L shaped pub with a dartboard around to the right and some random background music was playing during my visit late on Thursday evening a couple of weeks ago. Standard draught is available and the four hand pumps were drawing Courage Best (x2), Directors and Sunchaser. There were only a handful of other customers, but I found them all to be friendly and the governor was very amiable. I didn’t note if there were any televisions or Sky Sports as I was drunk and too busy talking to the dog in the picture. This is a decent station pub and if I find myself in this neck of the woods again I’ll have my one for the road here. QI: My new canine friend is called Boozer and he is partial to Fosters.