Isle of Wight Steam Railway

The challenge for any new build based there will be skilled staff, especially in these covid times. We would need to do something like the Brighton Atlantic where it is set up alongside, but independent of, the main works.

If you want an extension to Newport we would ALL have to win the lottery !

 

Small is beautiful so it would seem on the Isle Of Wight , must be something to do with living on an Island, they don't get away to the main land that often, ,and when they do everything is much bigger, IOW air craft, Islander, Mainland, airbus 340 , iow ferry Mainland, ocean liner , railways 2 lines , 8 miles, small tank engines, tube trains, Main land, take your pick, 12 car full size trains, more lines than you can shake a stick at, steam engines , anything from a terrier to a pacific.

 

?

 

As I may have mentioned before, I haven't visited the IoWSR in person as yet. But all the same, in the recent past few years having read up news and history about them and indeed the island's unique railway history in general... can't deny I've rather follow in love with this jewel of a heritage railway... The small antiquated locomotives and carriages, the smart uniform like most of them having wearing southern railway green, the beautiful timeless scenery they travel through... Virtually everything is pristine, all well cared for.

Love the fact the island resident locos all had and do have names too, seeing as traditionally only the largest and more prestigious engines received names.

Though we may berate Paul Hitch at times for how he holds the IoWSR to such a high regard compared to most, can't deny myself he's not entirely wrong in his view, for I honestly view this heritage railway as being close to recapturing a specific time period and setting to near perfection then any other. There are things that could be expanded and improved upon sure, no place is TRULY perfect, but can't deny the IoWSR feels as closer to perfection then any other heritage railway IMHO.

Also on as an added note, this railway actually inspired me to actual commit to building a model railway someday (I say someday as right now I just don't have the space where I live), something I had been going back and forth on whether I would actually commit to such an idea. Biggest problem being I wanted to have reasonable length of rakes behind locos on an end to end layout with at least 3 stations. A tall order to achieve when space in British homes are limited and locomotives and carriages being such large and long things...

With the Isle of Wight railway setting though, I can make that work, the carriages and locos being much more compact as well as unique. Certainly it helps that Isle of Wight based locos are being well covered in RTR model form now, along with the small 4 and 6 wheel coaches. So I'm well covered there.

Might take a bit of creative license though, bring a Drummond T9, 700 and M7 into the mix... maybe a Adams Radial Tank too. I already bought those and don't wish to part with them. I mean hey there small compact locos too, they could have worked on Isle of Wight railway like setting... kinda.

 

I can already sense the apoplexy from Hayling Island, Big Chufferitis!

 

Hey, hey! I'd hardly call any of those locos big chuffers, the biggest probably being the T9, and even then version I got is with the shorter 6 wheel tender type, not the great big water-carts most seem to remember them using. It's a compact loco for sure, perfect for more compact settings on a branch line.

 

Anything is possible on a layout On the real thing unduly big stuff should not be entertained

 

I can also detect the shades of locomotive enthusiasts from a broad sweep of Southern England from Barnstaple to Dover being surprised at the notion that locomotive names were reserved only for the largest and most prestigious locomotives! For many years, some companies thought rather that applying numbers to locomotives was rather infra dig!

Tom

 

One was the IWR

 

Like an Ivatt?

 

Or a 33?

 

Well aimed, but I think we've been round this one just a few times...

 

Yes, and some reputable companies as well

Tom

 

Have a shufter through the island lines' pre-grouping histories .... The LBSCR E4 (tried post-grouping) wasn't the largest loco deemed 'out of gauge' by a long way and the axle loading, before the Southern relaid it all, wasn't the greatest either. At grouping, IWCR No.6 (a Black Hawthorn 4-4-0T and one of few locos actually bought new) was promptly banished from it's home metals, serving out it's remaining life on the ex-IWR Ryde-Ventnor route, but only until all those new fangled O2s rendered it redundant.

 

Not so different to an 02 although bigger tanks and bunker plus superheater add a bit of bulk Nothing like a Big ******r

Brought in for a gala

 

When the Beyer Peacock works were closed, a lot of the wheel patterns were gifted to the Cambrian Railways museum at Oswestry.
There may be one there that is suitable.

 

The weight difference is twice the weight difference of an RBr to a coach with full passenger accommodation, which as we've previously established, is far too much of an extravagance. Think of all that extra coal you'll be burning lugging that extra weight around...

 

Absolutely nothing in relation to lugging around 4000 gallons behind an unduly large tender engine

 

Indeed not, that's more comparable to the weight difference between a Ivatt and a Terrier...