Island Line to close again

The Island Line on the Isle of Wight is to close completely for a month from September, and partly for nine months.

The 8.5-mile route from Ryde Pier Head to Shanklin will close between 6 September and 6 October for what South Western Railway calls “vital maintenance.”

Ryde Pier will close from 6 September until May 2025 “while life extension work continues.”

It means passengers will not have seen a consistent service along the whole route for more than four years.

The whole route closed for 10 months in 2021 for complete overhaul, including track and signalling.

The pier then closed for nine months in 2022-23, with less than half of the planned work completed. Rough winter weather was blamed.

SWR said the month-long full closure would include track and bridge renewals between Ryde St Johns Road and Ryde Pier Head, renovation to the footbridge at Brading station, signalling work at Ryde and bridge repairs in Sandown.

Tom McNamee, infrastructure director for Network Rail’s Wessex region, explained: “Part of the track and infrastructure has become life-expired and extreme weather is contributing to the acceleration of the degradation of the railway.

“We recognise there is never a convenient time to close the line, but we have waited to do so until after the important summer period.”

Mark Dunn, general manager on Island Line, added: “Due to the complex nature of the repairs and refurbishments at Ryde Pier, which aim to give the historic structure a further 60 years of use, a further long-term closure is required.”

Buses will replace trains throughout the closures.

When the line reopens from Ryde Esplanade in October, a full service of two trains an hour for the first time in many years is promised.

Previous promises to deliver the timetable were not met.

The major work in 2021 had been intended to deliver a service every 30 minutes in each direction, but failed to do so. Prior to that, previous 1938-built Class 483 trains on poor-quality track were rarely able to deliver more than one train an hour.

The 2021 closure allowed for complete refurbishment, including track and signalling, with platform heights raised ready for new trains. The work was planned to last three months, but then continued for ten months.

Additional major work only three years later is therefore a surprise.

Since the line reopened, a full timetable has hardly ever been delivered.

Services had already been running at one an hour for most of 2024, because of faults with the Class 484 trains.

Only one of the five two-car Vivarail-built former London Underground trains was in service for much of the time.

SWR said two trains were in long-term maintenance following damage during flooding in 2023. Other trains suffered from excessive wheel wear.

Although SWR is responsible for both track and trains on the island, the pier is separately managed by Network Rail.

Ryde Pier is the world’s oldest seaside pleasure pier, with construction starting in 1813. It is really three 680-metre long piers, combining at Pier Head. The railway pier was added in 1880. A parallel tramway closed in 1969 and was rebuilt last year as a pedestrian route. The road pier was refurbished in 2011.

Through the winter of 2022-2023, Network Rail said it lost 60 days of work due to bad weather. The crumbling structure had been shrouded in scaffolding.