This year was the 50th anniversary of the Isle of Wight’s ‘underground’, an anniversary that appears to have been missed! There may have been local celebrations however the news archives at the British Library had nothing on record. Instead the 150th anniversary of the line was celebrated in 2014. The 2016 anniversary of 50 years on the nearby steam railway (1966-2016) wasn’t forgotten and featured in the press! That was the occasion when the Isle of Wight steam railway moved its stock (under its own power) from Newport to Havenstreet. This post is an update with stuff on the new Class 484s.
The post commemorates the Island Line’s 50th anniversary, hence some pics from my archives of the line in 1974 and 1989 as Ryde Rail plus briefly the first days of the new class 483 trains. It was posted rather late because I couldn’t find some of my older Island Line photographs but not only that it was that very copy of Railway World that was missing!
That magazine article, as I deemed, was to be somewhat central to the article otherwise ultimately the post would never be finished. In early November 2017 I found the magazine by chance right at the back of a pile of books thus this is a late November post celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Island Line!
I took a great interest in the introduction of the 1938 tube stock (Class 483s) on the Island Line however it was clear they were just were not going to make it cos they couldn’t cope with the line’s track geometry. It meant a stay of execution for the older stock hence this post is more about the 1924-27 tube stock or as they were known, the 485/486 VECTIS units.
Ryde St Johns Road station in January 1974 on my first ever visit.
The ‘new’ electrified Isle railway in its early days still made for an impressive line despite the closure of the lines to Newport/Cowes and Ventnor. Intensive summer services featured trains every twelve minutes, there were full track layouts, every platform and track was in use, and perhaps more importantly, in everyone’s mind there was a still extant possibility to return trains to both Newport and Ventnor.
The first two pictures are of the line in January 1974. This was my first ever visit to the isle. Compared to the summer it was a very dull and cold day in January. I found a quite sleepy line just waiting for the next influx of summer visitors wanting to make their way to the seaside resorts of Sandown and Shanklin.
The line heading out of Shanklin temptingly towards Ventnor. January 1974.
In those days the line towards Ventnor was part electrified as far as the first overbridge south of Shanklin. This section was regularly used as a shunt in the summer when the line ran its very intensive 12 minute interval services with seven car units in operation.
Many seem to think the shunt and up line were practically never used. These were – as my picture shows – even in the winter months! The up line could only be accessed from the headshunt, even just for simply stabling trains. The up platform was used during the summer months in the line’s early years. I have a picture showing passengers waiting for a train to enter the up platform from the shunt. This example of two VECTIS units at Shanklin is from Flickr. The invectis website advises use of the headshunt ceased after March 1979.
On this first visit in 1974 I managed a brief detour by bus to Ventnor and found the site of the old station. It had gone, replaced by new industrial units. Amazingly the signal box still stood though quite dilapidated.
The Railway World published an article in 1967 written at a time when it seemed every single un-remunerative rail service in the country was being shut down. Amazingly the Island line wasn’t and that flew in the face of Beeching. Yes most of the Isle of Wight’s railways had gone but the Ryde to Shanklin section was given a new breath of life and that was most unusual.
G. Kichenside’s ‘By Underground to Shanklin’ Railway World May 1967.
Geoffrey Kichenside’s Isle of Wight Album had just been published by Ian Allan Ltd so he was the natural choice to write this article on the island’s newly updated railway. He gives his view of the new line but laments the passing of the old:
The Ryde-Shanklin line is but a pale shadow of the old Island railway system which was always very much a family concern because of its isolation from the mainland. There was always an air of timelessness even though the summer Saturday timetable demanded precision timekeeping. Now much has changed; gone are the O2s, the LBSCR and SECR coaches and much of the operating interest of a branch type line. Now we have the more austere Underground electric trains, and just under 8½ miles of line. But the Island railway still retains its own character. Many of the staff are still there and becoming familiar with their new equipment; drivers for example learned the hard way that cab doors are much lower than on the O2s!
This was a time when automated tube trains in London had begun, certainly on the Hainault loop and the soon to open Victoria Line. The Hammersmith (District/Piccadilly) had begin LT’s first ever large scale testing of automatic ticket barrier gates, following an earlier experiment in 1964 at Stamford Brook. Yet despite it being a modernisation of sorts, the Island Line would stay in the mechanical past. That was evidenced by the fact the signalling was clearly – at least for a London tube train – of very ancient origin!
The Ryde-Shanklin line’s semaphore signalling and track diagram 1967.
One surprise of the newly reinvigorated line, according to Kichenside, was although its operations were focused upon trains between Ryde and Shanklin, it retained an office and staff at Newport for the purposes of parcels distribution. Presumably these relied on road transport from Ryde as the line there had now been closed!
Unit 042 (4VEC unit) arrives on the island 1966. The narrow boarding ramp gave a few hair-raising moments! Source: Twitter.
Unidentified Class 485/6 Vec-Tis unit in Argyll Street en route from the ferry to Ryde St. Johns Road, 1966. Source: Twitter.
BR Southern Region poster featuring the new electric services 1967.
It may come as a surprise that some of the VECTIS units actually ran in service still complete with ‘London Transport’ visible on the sides of the carriages! The old corporate identity hadn’t been rubbed out, simply painted over yet the lettering underneath stood proud. An example is this picture of an unidentified unit at Brading in 1974.
Even in the first the days of Network South East the by now quite ancient trains still had excitement and there was the semblance of a fully fledged railway. The repainted trains and rebranding of the services as Ryde Rail at least worked and gave hope.
The ‘new’ 38’s arrived in the newer NSE livery but soon were adorned with pictures of dinosaurs – fun for the kids but apt for a railway faced with the threat of extinction. Rationalisation of the double track section between Brading and Sandown initially didn’t do terrible harm as the 485/486s were able to easily maintain a 20 minute service using the new Sandown loop.
The Island’s Dinosaur line! A nice touch but somewhat ironic in view of the trains’ ageing nature.
The 483s just couldn’t do it. They swung all over the place as I remember too well. On some sections they had to crawl to prevent the very violent swinging they were susceptible to, with two sections in particular near Rowborough giving the most notable of these violent jerks. Timekeeping became problematic and staff much preferred the old stock. The 483s were used very lightly whilst the 485/86s continued to provide sterling service.
483 001 (003 at rear) seen at Ryde Pier Head 24 November 1989.
Ideally a half hour service would have helped with generous recovery times and enabled the older stock to be scrapped – but with track rationalisation and the one passing loop, the line had now been designed specifically for a 20 minute interval service and anything else just wasn’t going to fit. Although large scale scrapping of the old stock had begun at Sandown, that was put on hold for a while because the old trains were needed more than ever to maintain the service.
Pruning the line’s infrastructure may have helped to keep costs down but its ultimately done the overall image a huge disfavour with lopsided train times. Not only that any notion of getting trains back to Ventnor (which would have helped create a more balanced service) was dealt a huge blow with the first part of the old line out of Shanklin being converted to a road! Totally disappointing.
The old order on the Island Line at least provided a distraction from these great disappointments. The 1924/27/34 tube stock had many delights. Interior fittings, lights with shades, strap hangers, and builders plates etc as the following pictures show. The trains’ clerestory roofs were another feature immediately recognisable as a signature of the old classic style of tube trains.
What a title! Some cars had The Metropolitan Carriage, Wagon & Finance Co Ltd. Birmingham.
This one is easy! Cammell Laird & Co Ltd.
Some of the carriages purchased for the line were built by the Union Construction Ltd. This company built a substantial number of 1927 tube stock. As the above pictures show, Metropolitan Carriage and Cammell Laird too were builders of the original tube stock.