Isle of Wight Steam Railway

It's the third record breaking year since Covid lockdown for the IOWSR. There are others who have fared decently as well.

 

Great news for the railway. How does that relate to tourist numbers on the island as a whole and other attractions there like Osborne House etc? I only ask because while plenty of other railways do seem to be struggling, it seems to be in line with what other tourist attractions are experiencing, so curious to know if the island as a whole is doing well or if the IoWSR is an outlier even on its own turf.

 

As is not to be wondered at there is no consistent pattern. Osborne House remains the largest attraction with the IOWSR having overtaken Carisbrooke Castle into second place. A long established country park is up for sale.

 

It would be interesting to understand the overall pattern, though. Purely for the purposes of comparison, understanding whether IoWSR growth is in an area of growth, with all ships rising, tells a different story to IoWSR growing and with IoW tourism falling. That's partly about how well IoWSR is doing, but also a guide to whether "less successful" railways might actually be getting an unfair comparison.

 

Some data about spend and visitor numbers by quarter here.

https://visitwightpro.com/research-development/

 

Apologies if this has been answered before (I can't see any references) but are there any plans to sort out the web cams on the web page? The Havenstreet view has shrunk to a tiny fraction of it's former self and cannot be expanded and the Wootton one has just disappeared. If this is all that's going to be shown it's hardly worth keeping anything.

 

You can see the Havenstreet webcam clearly through this page.

https://www.camsecure.co.uk/isle_of_wight_steam_railway_webcam.html

The Wootton one is down.

 

Over the Easter weekend I could not access this one either, glad to see it is back. Although one of those annoying sites that does not have the, I understood, required reject all cookie option.

 

Havenstreet worked perfectly for me just now, plus the cookie notice came up on my phone.

By happy coincidence there was a train just leaving

 

Thanks

 

We had an excellent day on the line on Father's day. Travelled by island line to Smallbrook, where we got on the steam to Havenstreet. The railcar was running, so we had a trip to Wooton and then back to Ashey. As seats were limited, they had a system where you had to get a pass to travel on the railcar. We were given the run-around on how to get a pass (first sent to the shop, then the booking office, then back to the platform), but once we had the pass, then it was great. Had a further couple of trips on the steam, loved the rolling stock. Thought the train story was good, just a pity we could not get to the sidings round the back that looked as if it had some interesting stock that we could not see.
The only downside was on our return to Smallbrook. We wanted to watch the engine run round before we went to the island line platform to go back to Ryde. However, the steam railway staff shooed us off the platform saying they "had to lock up" - they were fairly officious about it. Ironically, they did not lock up at all and we were able to go back onto the steam railway platform after the train had left for Havenstreet and after we had missed seeing the runround. That was a bit disapponting and puzzling.
We enjoyed cream teas and a pint! All in all a great day out and we will come back.
Ian C

 

Thanks for your constructive comments Ian which we've noted. It's good to know that you had an enjoyable day and will be back. We try hard to keep our linear scrapyard out of sight - and we seem to have succeeded!
Nick

 

I know the general public don't like it, but as an enthusiast I always want to be able to see this stuff! If there's a safe way to make it accessible...