Five years later, it became a junction station with the construction by the North Cornwall Railway of a line south to Launceston which gave the latter company a direct through route over LSWR metals to London Waterloo.

It also relied, as did the lines which it served, to a large extent on summer holiday traffic and when this began to dry-up in the late 1950s and early 1960s with the increased use of the motorcar, it became unprofitable and a candidate for closure in the Beeching Report.

In 1990 the Devon Wildlife Trust purchased from British Rail and a private landowner a section of trackbed around Halwill to create a nature reserve covering an area of 2¾ hectares divided into five compartments.

[19] In 1998 Devon County Council began works to enable a cycleway to cross the site; this was realised in April 2005 when a 2+1⁄2 miles (4.0 kilometres) cycleway, forming part of the National Cycle Network, was opened which runs from the village centre via Beeching Close through the nature reserve and the woods on an elevated boardbank to the Forest Centre at Cookworthy where the South West Forest and the Ruby Country Initiative are based.

In 2005 Devon County Council agreed in principle to the creation of a bridleway on an intact disused section of the Bude Branch from Thorndon Cross (near the former Meldon Junction) and Halwill, a distance of approximately 7 miles (11 kilometres).