 The P&DR was not planned, or authorised, as a passenger railway.However Kendall reports an extract from a "chronicle in diary form compiled by one William Bray, sometime Rector of Tavistock"; approaching King's Tor he found that

Some huts, one a blacksmith's shop now presented themselves, and before this stood a vehicle not much unlike a rude kind of vis-a-vis with an awning.This I had observed passing on with some degree of rapidity before us.