Steaming back into Ryde?

Lets have some perspective here - with 1.4 million passengers a year Island Line compares favourably with branches on the mainland, and carries considerably more than the 1 million a year which the £350m Borders Railway hopes to attract by the end of the decade.

There are obvious differences but Ryde/Brading/Sandown/Lake/Shanklin make up nearly half the Island's 140,000 population and are themselves relatively cut off from the wider economy thanks to the Solent, expensive ferries, slow congested roads and a half-mile pier inaccessible to buses.

If it was on the mainland a service like Island Line would surely be championed, it's operational costs reduced through long term investment instead of decades of inefficient, labour intensive patch-up-and-mend and it certainly wouldn't be viewed as fair game by railway enthusiasts forever touting it for closure, conversion or turned into a seasonal tourist attraction.

Don't get me wrong, I would dearly wish to see the IWSR extended to Ryde but the Pier Head is clearly impractical and unaffordable - St Johns Road would be far cheaper and easier and the necessary changes could actually improve Island Line, allowing a true half-hourly service.

Chris

 

My family used the line a lot and having used the Horsham Brighton line when it was open myself , gone to School at Steyning and now driving along the A283 I would suggest the following :
The Thumpers were so much better than the crap old steam service with leaking cold damp carriages they increased patronage several fold, you had to stand on the main peak hour service from Brighton as far as Steyning and sometimes to Henfield. Sadly the DEMUs came too late to save the line and no attempt was made to operate the line in a more economical manner. Suggesting a year round steam service for the Island is total nonsense as regards providing a comfortable service people would use.

Actually most of Steyning welcomed the bypass as people could then actually get to the main street to shop and get around the town without traffic hastle. Still has a main street full of local shops and pubs.
The trackbed from Steyning to Bramber was slightly widened for the road which has very wide verges but if the cuttings were lined you could get a railway track alongside even now by replacing the two bridges with wider supports.
As an aside Horsham Brighton reopening would make a better BML2 than the route the current crackpots are proposing.

Brian

 

Horsham-Shoreham would involve massive property demolition at Henfield. Twenty-nine homes, to be precise. Yes, I counted. Steyning and Bramber stations are under the road, and the railway comes onto the road from the east and departs it to the west, so there'd have to be some kind of level crossing. It would make more sense to dust off the old plans, build the new A283 off the trackbed (I know, I said I don't like new bypasses!) and reclaim the trackbed for railway use. Oh, and at the north end, where the railway heads toward Henfield, there's a massive infilled cutting that I reckon would amount to three Imberhornes.

Some kind of battery-converted electric unit (and the IoW guys won't want Mk1-based!) would be necessary to run the Island Line's off-season services, I'm sure.

 

1.4million users? A quick look on usage at all stations on the ORR website doesn't seem to tally with that number. didn't someone post above that revenue was £1million?.

 

You are still implying a significant downgrade to what is currently a year round service, operating at 2tph and timed to meet hourly Catamaran sailings - that just wouldn't be acceptable, even if your ideas were practical and affordable.

How are you counting it? It's consistent with what's been said and quoted in the past, this article from last year for example describes Island Line as carrying "1.4 million passengers, a reduction of 9% due to a long term closure after storm damage in December 2013/January 2014" while this document from 2012 refers to "nearly 1.4 million" in 2009/10.

Chris

 

By taking the figures for each individual station and adding them. However the figures quoted by the ORR are I believe for journeys starting and ending at each station so there is an element of double counting as a journey from, say Sandown to Ryde would appear in the numbers twice so this also needs to be adjusted for.

 

I can only presume that's the convention for working it out - if you add up the numbers on the various wiki pages for 13/14 it comes to around 1.4m, and I'm not seeing a different number quoted anywhere.

 

Chris, as an IOW Resident what in your view would work best for the island for instance i would imagine moving the passing loop to brading and having 2 single line sections makes sence, and it frees up getting IOWSR services into Ryde, is there any connection between the up and down lines other than just before the tunnel, at esplanade is the up platform in a usable state?

 

It is the conventional way to work it out, but it is the unfortunately sometimes confused with journeys made. The two are not the same as a journey from the pier head to Ryde Esplanade, for example, counts once at the pier and again at Esplanade; yet there has only been one journey. The figures for the Waverley route are an estimate of new journeys and are not comparable.

 

Well, it isn't a year-round service, that's already been established, it's been closed during the winter. I would have thought 1tph quite sufficient for demand and one unit quite sufficient to run that service.

 

the line has only been closed in recent times because of storm damage to the permanent way and a landslip, before then it was a year round service with much of the maintenance being done at night, winter time timetable was i believe the same basic service as the summer timetable with an hourly sunday service.

 

It is an all year service, why do you think that it isn't?

 

And equally to the point, why do you consider 1 tph sufficient?

 

You said that 1.4m doesn't tally with the ORR figures, but following the normal convention it does - I'm not aware of any alternative figure, so if it's consistent with the rest of the country I don't see a problem as there are always major caveats with such data.

It wasn't closed during the winter, the line between Ryde St Johns and Shanklin was closed for 10 weeks to repair the cutting at Sandown.

For the distances being travelled an hour wait between all trains all day just isn't sufficient, and to be useful trains need to manage a return trip between the hourly Catamaran sailings - a big ask for a heavy battery unit that requires recharging, and even a DMU might struggle. If it became a glorified heritage line with a 25mph top speed it would surely become impossible.

 

You really do need to read what I wrote. I did not say what you have written. The Waverley figures are new journeys, the figures are not an estimation of the sum of arrivals and departures on the line.

 

What it needs is an emphasis on reducing long term costs rather than avoiding short term investment which risks costing more in the long run, and maximising the traffic on offer. Ideally this would involve a..
- complete renewal and rationalisation of the track and signalling which I don't believe has seen any major work since electrification.
- passing loop at or near Brading to make the frequency 30/30 rather than 40/20
- replacement rolling stock that's cheaper and easier to maintain and needs fewer spare vehicles
- customer information screens between St Johns and Shanklin
- consider public access to Smallbrook Junction now that the adjacent housing development has been approved, a business park and the Island's largest supermarket would be within walking distance and more houses are likely to follow
- perhaps some form of DOO so guards can concentrate on collecting fares.
- extend the IWSR to Ryde St Johns, which should benefit them, Ryde and the Island generally.

As for connections between up and down lines there is one just south of Ryde St Johns, so trains in the Up platform can reverse back into the depot headshunt. The Down platform at Esplanade has been cut back and planted up, with the pier section removed. I think the rather grotty subway underneath may be flooded too.

You said that "a quick look on usage at all stations on the ORR website doesn't seem to tally with that number", yet if you follow what I understand is the normal convention they do tally with 1.4m.

As for the Waverley it obviously isn't a sum of entries and exists, but it remains an estimate of the line's usage and will presumably be judged against figures arrived at in the same way as Island Line's 1.4m.

 

About two years ago we went on Holiday to the IOW in the Autumn half term.

The kids were desperate for a train ride in the dark so we ended up rattling between Shanklin & Ryde on several evenings

I can vouch for the trains being pretty busy, although it was past 7

 

Oh no - here we go again:

http://www.rail.co.uk/rail-news/2015/island-line-closure-fears/

David R

 

As per usual the islands MP, or his advisors seem hell bent on closing Island line, why? because they dont think that its worth saving? i wonder has any of them ever used it? or do they have chauffeurs drive them to the hovercraft and a government car pick them up from Southsea? and what other pies do they have their fingers into?
what the line needs is investment to reduce the long term costs, to say new stock could be built on the island thats cloud cockoo land when has the island ever had new stock? the most likely option will be something displaced by newer stock else where . and then theres the Ryde Tunnel, will it fit, will it not question, the real problem is that what happens if the DFT decide its not cost efffective add into this a local politician who for dogmatic reasons , seems to take a view of Public= Bad, Private= good but who is going to invest in something needing £40 million worth of improovements for little or no profit?

 

Sadly I fear mere indignation will not be enough. Facts and figures that stand up to intense scrutiny will be needed but the basic ones do not make for comfortable reading.

Paul H