Island Life Magazine Ltd February/March 2008 | Page 38

life

ISLAND HISTORY

History
of Island
Steam
Written by James Kerr

P

lans for a railway service on the
Island began in the 1840s but
did not come to fruition until
the 1860s, when the first line on the
Isle of Wight, the Cowes & Newport
line, began operations. A second line,
Sandown to Newport, encountered a
number of problems in construction,
but once it was running, the success
of these new transport links quickly
led to the construction of a number
of other lines during the following
decades. At the height of the golden
age of steam, a number of different
rail companies provided railway
services on the Island, with trains

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traveling on over 50 miles of track.
Many of the lines used equipment
that had been deemed ‘past-it’ on the
mainland, for example, a number used
small Victorian tank locomotives put
out to grass across the Solent. As a
consequence, journeys on the Island
tended to be short, and at pretty
pedestrian speeds. But a number of these
engines, re-christened after towns on
the Island, lived to a ripe old age. For
example the Ashey, Brading and Chale
all dated from the 1920s but were still
being used into the 1960s. The rather
more leisurely approach to travel perhaps
contributed a ce rtain extra charm to
vacationing travel from the mainland.
The smaller operating companies merged
into two larger companies, the Isle of
Wight and the Isle of Wight Central.
Construction continued apace with the
Isle of Wight company opening a line
from Ryde to Shanklin, a passenger
service that ran from north to south,
in 1864, expanding to Ventnor in 1866.
The same company opened a new stretch
of line from Brading to Bembridge,
with a third station in between at
the village of St Helens, in 1882.

Up until the 1870s, none of the Isle
of Wight railway lines connected
with ferries to the mainland. A ferry
service had commenced to Portsmouth
from Ryde after the construction of
Ryde Pier in 1812. For many years,
passengers disembarking at Ryde Pier
Head had to use a rather unsatisfactory
horse-drawn tram system to get to
Ryde St Johns Road station.
Rail companies on the mainland began
to eye up the potentially profitable
opportunities on the Island. Both the
London & South Western Railway and
the London, Brighton & South Coast
Railway were looking to expand their
networks onto the Island. The companies
co-operated in the expansion of Ryde
Pier to over half a mile long, and built
a joint-owned railway line along the
length of the pier, connecting to Ryde
St John's Station along the route that
had been used by the horse-drawn trams,
opening in July 1880. Because of the
high construction costs, fares were 1s 2d,
which was considered at the time to be
the most expensive railway journey in the
world for a distance of under 1 mile.
After 1923, the Isle of Wight and the

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