wrote on 10 August 2015
at
11:20 am
Your travels over the old lines in the Isle of Wight bring back many memories of these trains. It was in April 1957 that I was on a ten day school journey to Sandown when I was an eleven year old school boy. We had to keep a diary, which at the time seemed a bit of a bind, but I still have it. Over that period we travelled on the lines daily. The Freshwater and Ventnor West lines had closed and I am not sure about the line from Ryde to Newport. I see from my notes that we used the line from Sandown to Newport, Shanklin, Ventnor and Cowes. My memory that stands out during that period is when we visited Carisbrooke Castle. We travelled from Sandown to Shide and then from Shide to Newport. I can still see the train coming into Shide station and the token being exchanged before it stopped. We must have been some of the last visitors to use the Sandown Newport line as it appears to have been closed later in the year. Thanks for the memory.