In 1937 the Great Western Railway was going to build a new inland route around Dawlish involving a two-mile tunnel through the Haldon hills.
http://www.firstgreatwestern.info/coffeeshop/index.php?topic=5719.msg59366#msg59366
The necessary land bought and fenced off prior to construction starting.Rail traffic levels including freight at that time, now virtually nearly all on the roads, demanded four tracks between Exeter and Newton Abbot. These could not then be accommodated on the Dawlish sea wall route.A new rail route onward from Newton Abbot to a point near Marley Head(close to South Brent) bypassing Totnes and Dainton/Rattery banks was also surveyed to be built to a minimum 1 mile radius curvature for higher speed but the 2nd World War stopped these schemes progressing with the land eventually being sold off in 1949.
The schemes were to be funded by government interest-free loans to GWR.
In an ideal world this would be the perfect solution, but of course we live in a far from ideal world and new railways are very expensive.
Newton Abbot is now effectively a parkway station for the Torbay area, and is therefore an important source of revenue for the railways in South Devon. So if any future alternatives to the problems of the Dawlish route were needed they would need to take account of this.In the mean time its still much cheaper and desirable to keep the Dawlish sea wall route open for as long as possible.
