Flashback Friday

An occasional series looking back at four decades of railway enthusiasm.

Just to prove that my interests don't revolve solely around rural narrow gauge railways, we'll start off with something completely different ...

New stock for the Isle of Wight

5th and 6^th May 1990 were significant dates for the railways of Hampshire. That weekend, the third rail electrification between Portsmouth, Fareham, Southampton and Eastleigh, the so-called Solent Link, was turned on. This milestone was marked by a gala, with stations decked out in Network South East red, white and blue bunting, an enhanced train service and various connected events, including a mini open day at BRML’s Eastleigh Works.

Significant though the Solent Link electrification was for the area, one of the main things that sticks in my memory was the display of 483 008, one of the newly refurbished 1938 tube trains, in the yard at Eastleigh Works, soon to be dispatched to its new home on the Ryde –Shanklin, Island Line.

The refurbished 1938 stock, designated Class 483 under the BR TOPS system, was the replacement for the even older ex LT standard stock, Class 485 and 486 (4VEC & 3TIS in the ‘proper’ Southern region classification) which had been in service on the island since 1967. The 38 stock looked rather good in the NSE livery and certainly appeared much more modern than the existing trains, although in reality it was only a few years younger than some of the cars it was replacing.

It wasn’t quite the end of the line for the standard stock though. In October 1990 a five car train was returned to the mainland and travelled under its own power to London. The intention was to restore it as a heritage set and indeed Ryde depot had already painted two of the trailers in LT livery. The official handover was at the Tube Centenary open day at Morden Depot on  4^th November that year.

 

The two Driving Motor cars, 2 and 7, are seen here at Morden that weekend. Sadly things didn’t go as planned. With other DMs being obtained for heritage use from London Transport departmental stock the two ex-island cars were left for two decades and were eventually cut up at Eastleigh over the winter of 2011 /12.

 

The remaining cars of the 1938 stock are currently in their last few months of service on Island Line, kept running against the odds by the ever resourceful staff at Ryde depot. As has been reported in the press, once again the replacement stock will be from the London Underground, this time in the form of the former District Line D stock trains, heavily rebuilt by Vivarail. The last 38 stock trains will run in early January after which Island Line will close until the spring to allow for various infrastructure upgrades to enable surface stock, rather than tube stock, to be used.

Twenty nine years after it was seen newly rebuilt at Eastleigh, here is unit 008 at Ryde Pier Head on 26^th May 2019.