Short answer: There is no station at Tavistock — the line closed in the sixties and the nearest mainline is Plymouth, with buses up. Once you are here the town is small and entirely walkable, and the Meadows, the market and the canal path are all on foot. Dartmoor is not.
Tavistock lost its railway in the 1960s and has never got it back, which is the single biggest practical difference between here and a town like Totnes. The nearest mainline station is Plymouth, about forty minutes south, with buses running up through the Tamar valley.
This is the realistic route. Plymouth is on the main line from Exeter and London, so getting to Plymouth is easy; the leg from there to Tavistock is the bus. Check the timetable both ways before committing, particularly on a Sunday when services thin right out.
Dartmoor, which is the reason a lot of people come to Tavistock in the first place. The moor is a short drive east and essentially unreachable by public transport — the buses are sparse, seasonal and stop short of the good walking. The same goes for Lydford Gorge and Buckland Abbey.
Tavistock without a car works if the town is the point: the market, the architecture, the park and the food. It does not work if the moor is the point. That is worth deciding before you book, because the gap between those two trips is considerable.
Come by train to Plymouth, bus up to Tavistock, and treat the moor as a separate outing with a hire car or a taxi for one day. The canal and river paths from the town give you water and greenery on foot, which takes some of the sting out of not reaching the high moor.
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