page_title: Isle of Wight Railway
section_title: Electrification
hierarchical_section_title: Isle of Wight Railway / Electrification
caption_attribution_description: English: South West Trains class 483 EMU 483008 arrives at Sandown railway station with an Island Line service for Ryde Pier Head.
context_page_description: The Isle of Wight Railway was a railway company on the Isle of Wight, United Kingdom; it operated 14 miles of railway line between Ryde and Ventnor. It opened the first section of line from Ryde to Sandown in 1864, later extending to Ventnor in 1866. The Ryde station was at St Johns Road, some distance from the pier where the majority of travellers arrived. A tramway operated on the pier itself, and a street-running tramway later operated from the Pier to St Johns Road. It was not until 1880 that two mainland railways companies jointly extended the railway line to the Pier Head, and IoWR trains ran through, improving the journey arrangements.
  An independent company built a branch line from Brading to Bembridge, and the IoWR operated passenger trains on the line from 1882, and later absorbed the owning company.
  The IoWR was itself absorbed into the Southern Railway in the "grouping" of 1923.
  The Bembridge branch closed in 1953, and in 1966 the Ryde Pier Head to Ventnor line was truncated to terminate at Shanklin. This was electrified, and former London Underground tube train stock was brought into use on the line; this arrangement continues to the present day.
context_section_description: Up to this time the island's train services were exclusively steam operated, and thought had been given to how the short residue of the island network would be run. The line was closed between 1 January and 19 March 1967 for completion of third-rail electrification and raising of the track at stations so that platform step heights conformed to the tube stock.
  The third rail electrification was at 630v dc, and power was taken from the 33kV public supply through three new substations. Because of the low headroom in the Ryde tunnel, no British Railways electric train stock was suitable, and 43 second hand tube cars were purchased from London Transport. Goods traffic would not be conveyed. 19 of the UCC and MCCW cars dated from 1927 to 1934, 14 Cammell-Laird cars were from 1927 and 10 MCWF cars were from 1925. All were from the Piccadilly and Northern lines, although some had run on the Northern City Line. They were altered to have running rail traction current return instead of fourth rail. They were made up into four-car sets (Motor – trailer – trailer – motor) and three-car sets (control trailer – trailer – motor).
  The basic train service was half-hourly, but the peak service was five trains an hour. This frequency was sufficient to handle the pier tramway system's traffic, and that was discontinued from January 1967.
  Mitchell and Smith remark that at Brading, "the 13 elegant swan-neck gas lamps survive in 1985, controlled by automatic time clocks as the station is no longer staffed. We believe that Ilkley is the only other station on BR to have platforms gas lit."
  A new station called Lake was opened in 1987.
caption: An electric train at Sandown, 2013
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