lizzies to make sure they are not made of plastic. The displays are done by local disabled people, Tony Dickinson, the station manager, tells me. Tony, a slick young man with a neat white shirt and tie, with a South West Trains badge on a clip, controls all the stations on the lines, and his office is a buzzy place shared with drivers and conductors drinking from steaming mugs of tea. âWeâve had a good year,â he tells me. âA total of 1.3 million passengers â Iâm very pleased.â Not surprising, since this means that nearly half the 2.7 million passengers who travel to the Isle of Wight each year get aboard one of his Tube trains. Not exactly Piccadilly Circus, but not bad for a small island off the Hampshire coast. âAnd weâre operating sixty-seven trains a day,â he tells me. I am too polite to remind him that recent economies mean the service runs to an odd timetable, with alternating intervals of twenty and forty minutes between trains. Not exactly convenient for most people.
All traces of the engine sheds, which were once outside his office and in the 1960s attracted droves of young boys who preferred the thrill of trainspotting to a boring afternoon on the beach with their parents, have gone. However such is the measure of affection still held for the little locos running at the end of steam that their handsome brass nameplates (all commemorating island towns and villages) can fetch up to £15,000 at auctions of railwayana.
But time to head off on the next train south to the islandâs newest station, Smallbrook Junction, one of a tiny number of stations in British railway history never to have had any external access. This is where the lines to Newport, the islandâs capital, and Cowes once diverged, until Beeching got his hands on them. A signal box once stood here and the signalman doled out tokens allowing track access to the respective drivers as they raced off with their trains full of holidaymakers down the lines to Ventnor (then the terminus of the Shanklin line) and to Cowes. In the 1960s it was the busiest mechanical junction box in southern England. But the Cowes line was too good to lose and a bunch of preservationists saved part of it to become what is now the Isle of Wight Steam Railway. In an astonishing act of generosity, the old British Rail management built Smallbrook Junction station in 1991 to allow passengers to change from the Tube trains on the Shanklin line.
But renewals since have been rare â and the platform and signal box at Brading, the next station down the line, are now weed-grown and derelict, with the boarded-up station setting the tone for the rest of the line. At Sandown, the loveliest resort on the island with wide sandy beaches, the station cafe is derelict, with dust-covered tables visible through a broken window, although the newspaper kiosk is still open, bearing its former WH Smith sign, proclaiming in faded paint, N EWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES POSTED ANYWHERE IN THE COUNTRY . A notice on the toilets announces that they close each day at 12.25 p.m. â a time at which bladders presumably cease to function and which explains why, at the Shanklin terminus, a man is hosing down the subway with a watering can of disinfectant. Wasnât like this once. I have a black and white photograph of Shanklin from 1963, spruce and smart, with hundreds of folk in their holiday best making their way to the taxi rank for their seafront hotels. There is not a single taxi here today and the walk down to the beach is a long one, although some of the best sands in the south of England make it worth the effort.
Until 1966 the trains went on from here to Ventnor, through a 1,312-yard tunnel under St Boniface Down to a spectacular station set in a chalk cutting. But the tunnel, which is now used by the local water authority, would be far too expensive to reopen. It is tempting to walk the rest of the course of the line over the down, but I
All traces of the engine sheds, which were once outside his office and in the 1960s attracted droves of young boys who preferred the thrill of trainspotting to a boring afternoon on the beach with their parents, have gone. However such is the measure of affection still held for the little locos running at the end of steam that their handsome brass nameplates (all commemorating island towns and villages) can fetch up to £15,000 at auctions of railwayana.
But time to head off on the next train south to the islandâs newest station, Smallbrook Junction, one of a tiny number of stations in British railway history never to have had any external access. This is where the lines to Newport, the islandâs capital, and Cowes once diverged, until Beeching got his hands on them. A signal box once stood here and the signalman doled out tokens allowing track access to the respective drivers as they raced off with their trains full of holidaymakers down the lines to Ventnor (then the terminus of the Shanklin line) and to Cowes. In the 1960s it was the busiest mechanical junction box in southern England. But the Cowes line was too good to lose and a bunch of preservationists saved part of it to become what is now the Isle of Wight Steam Railway. In an astonishing act of generosity, the old British Rail management built Smallbrook Junction station in 1991 to allow passengers to change from the Tube trains on the Shanklin line.
But renewals since have been rare â and the platform and signal box at Brading, the next station down the line, are now weed-grown and derelict, with the boarded-up station setting the tone for the rest of the line. At Sandown, the loveliest resort on the island with wide sandy beaches, the station cafe is derelict, with dust-covered tables visible through a broken window, although the newspaper kiosk is still open, bearing its former WH Smith sign, proclaiming in faded paint, N EWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES POSTED ANYWHERE IN THE COUNTRY . A notice on the toilets announces that they close each day at 12.25 p.m. â a time at which bladders presumably cease to function and which explains why, at the Shanklin terminus, a man is hosing down the subway with a watering can of disinfectant. Wasnât like this once. I have a black and white photograph of Shanklin from 1963, spruce and smart, with hundreds of folk in their holiday best making their way to the taxi rank for their seafront hotels. There is not a single taxi here today and the walk down to the beach is a long one, although some of the best sands in the south of England make it worth the effort.
Until 1966 the trains went on from here to Ventnor, through a 1,312-yard tunnel under St Boniface Down to a spectacular station set in a chalk cutting. But the tunnel, which is now used by the local water authority, would be far too expensive to reopen. It is tempting to walk the rest of the course of the line over the down, but I
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