I

Iarnrod Eireann, IE

Republic of Ireland Railways was formed in 1986 to take over the railway operations of Coras Iompair Eireann, or CIE, although it remains a subsidiary of CIE. Although Ireland had a number of 3ft gauge lines, all of today’s railways in Ireland run on the 5ft 3in Irish standard gauge, of which IE has just over 1,200 route miles. It also operates freight services into and from Northern Ireland, and a regular Dublin-Belfast express, ‘The Enterprise’ is operated jointly with Northern Ireland Railways.

Inglis, Sir James Charles, 1851-1911

Aberdeen-born Inglis worked under James Abernethy in the construction of the Alexandra Docks at Newport, before becoming assistant engineer on the South Devon and Cornwall Railways in 1875. When these companies were absorbed by the Great Western in 1878, he joined that company and worked on the development of its docks at Plymouth. Between 1881 and 1883, he was the GWR’s resident engineer building the Princeton Railway. He became the GWR’s assistant engineer in 1892, but was almost immediately promoted to chief engineer.

While he improved the GWR routes between London and both South Wales and the West Country, as well as between Birmingham and Bristol, his main achievement was the construction of the new harbour at Fishguard and the railway connection to it for the Irish Sea and transatlantic services. He became the GWR’s general manager in 1903, planning to centralise management, but despite board approval he encountered fierce opposition from George Churchward and his reforms were left to a later generation. He was knighted in 1911.

Inverness & Perth Junction Railway

One of the predecessors of the Highland Railway, the line opened in 1863 between Dunkeld and Forres, using the Pass of Drumochter, hitherto regarded as too difficult for earlier locomotives. At Forres, a junction with the Inverness & Aberdeen Junction Railway enabled Moray to be reached. Crossing largely open country with many streams, the line needed eight viaducts, 126 bridges over streams and rivers, and another 119 over roads, and at first many of these were built of wood, both for quickness and economy. There were a number of steep gradients, and the summit at Druimuachdar remains the highest on any British main line.

Irish North Western Railway

Formed in 1862 on the merger of the Dundalk & Enniskillen Railway with the Londonderry & Enniskillen Railway, both of which were incorporated in 1845, the Irish North Western was itself taken over by the Great Northern Railway of Ireland in 1876.

Irish Railway Clearing House

The development of a railway network throughout Ireland created the same problems as in Great Britain, and in 1848, an Irish Railway Clearing House was established with a function similar to that of the Railway Clearing House. Despite nationalisation of railways in the Republic in 1945 and in Northern Ireland in 1948-49, with the Great Northern Railway of Ireland following in 1953, the IRCH continued in existence until 1974.

Isle of Man

The railways in the Isle of Man at no time presented a coherent whole, although the Isle of Man Railway presented a network that reached much of the island. Other railways included the Manx Electric Railway, originally known as the Douglas & Laxey Coast Electric Tramway and the Snaefell Mountain Railway, but there were also horse trams in Douglas, the capital, and a 2ft Groudle Glen Railway.

Isle of Man Railway

Tourism to the Isle of Man started during the early nineteenth century, but because of poor roads, most of the visitors remained in Douglas. A number of schemes for railways were put forward after 1847, but it was not until 1873 that the Isle of Man Railway opened a line between Douglas and Peel via St John’s using a 3ft gauge. The following year, a second line opened between Douglas and Port Erin via Castletown. Locomotives were built by Beyer Peacock in Manchester, which produced a class of outside cylinder 2-4-0 tank engines, which remained in production, much improved, until delivery of No16, Mannin, in 1926. The railway initially used four-wheel carriages produced by the Metropolitan Railway & Carriage Company, but later the bodies were removed and paired to fit on new bogie underframes.

A further line was opened by the Manx Northern Railway in 1879, linking St John’s with Ramsay, and when the Foxdale Railway between St John’s and Foxdale opened in 1886, it was operated by the MNR. In 1904, the MNR and the FR were taken over by the IOMR giving a total of 46½ route miles.

The railways were a great success, and tourism boomed, with most visitors from the north-west of England, Glasgow, Belfast and Dublin. In 1913, the number of visitors peaked at 615,000. The First World War saw the holidaymakers disappear, but military personnel, prisoners of war and internees were sent to the island. The internment camp at Knockaloe had a short branch built off the Peel line, paid for by the British government and worked by the IOMR; post-war the track was lifted.

Post-war, the number of visitors fell far below the level of 1913, with 1925 having just 534,000 visitors. Perhaps more serious, bus competition began to make an impact, so that between 1925 and 1937, the number of passengers fell from 1,344,620 to 775,000. Freight was also badly affected by road haulage – better suited to the short distances on the island.

The Second World War once again saw the end of the holiday market, and for the first time government assistance was given to the IOMR to compensate for the loss of traffic. Even so, the line to Foxdale, always the most marginal of the IOMR network, closed for good in 1942. Because the Isle of Man is not part of the United Kingdom, operations were not taken over by the Railways Executive Committee in either war.

Post-war, the Isle of Man suffered a further fall in tourism, and railway services began to be pruned, especially during the winter months. As an economy measure, a diesel locomotive was introduced and two railcars bought from the County Donegal Railway, but these were seldom used. By 1964, the only line with a year-round service was between Ramsay and Port Erin. In 1965, after all of the remaining lines were operated during the summer, the IOMR announced that it would close for the winter, followed by the announcement in January 1966 that the railway would not reopen for the summer. It was leased by the Marquess of Ailsa for the summers of 1967 and 1968, then closed again. The lines to Peel and Ramsay were lifted, and while some services were operated between Douglas and Port Erin, it was not until the IOMR was nationalised in 1978, and operated as part of the Manx Electric Railway Board, which subsequently became the Isle of Man Passenger Transport Board in 1983, and more recently the Department of Tourism, Leisure and Transport. Services continue through spring, summer and autumn between Douglas and Port Erin.

Isle of Wight

It is worth considering the railways of this small island as a whole because, unlike those in Jersey or the Isle of Man, they interconnected and after grouping could be operated as a cohesive while. The railways of the Isle of Wight were small companies, but they were fiercely independent, with three operating 56 miles of railway in an area with a population of around 85,000 and an area of just 127 square miles. The ambitions of the LSWR and LBSCR had not ignored the island, with the line from Ryde Pier Head to St John’s owned jointly by the two companies, even though neither ran any trains on the island.

Of the three companies, the only one with a reasonable level of traffic and capable of producing adequate returns was the Isle of Wight Railway, whose main line from Ryde to Ventnor opened as far as Shanklin in 1864, and then reached Ventnor through a tunnel cut under St Boniface Down in 1866, a distance of 12½ miles including the section along the pier at Ryde, essential so that ferries from Portsmouth could come alongside at all states of the tide. The IWR also operated the short 2¾ mile branch from Brading to Bembridge Harbour, opened in 1882, which was initially operated in conjunction with a wagon ferry from Langston on Hayling Island provided by the LBSCR, but abandoned in 1888. In 1898, the IWR took over the branch.

The Isle of Wight Central Railway had opened as the Cowes & Newport Railway in 1862, and this remained an isolated operation until the opening of the Ryde & Newport Railway in 1875. The two companies did not amalgamate until 1887 to create the IWC, which also took over the struggling Isle of Wight (Newport Junction) Railway which operated from Newport to Sandown, where it shared the station with the IWR. When a branch was built from Merstone, on the Newport-Sandown line, to Ventnor West between 1897 and 1900, that also became part of the IWCR. Traffic even on the line from Ryde to Newport and Cowes was never substantial, although there was some freight at Medina Wharf between Newport and Cowes. Altogether, it is not surprising that no dividend was paid until 1913.

Between them, these two railways did at least link major centres of population on the Isle of Wight, but the third company, the Freshwater, Yarmouth and Newport used a 12 mile route to reach places no bigger than a village. The ferry from Yarmouth to Lymington was the least well placed of the three main ferry routes for traffic from London and the main south coast cities. Opened during 1888-9, the Freshwater, Yarmouth and Newport Railway was initially worked by the IWCR until 1913, when it decided to work on its own, purchasing and hiring three tank engines. To be fair, there were schemes to provide a tunnel to link the line to the LSWR just north of Lymington, but these never came to fruition. Even if they had, there would have been a major bottleneck at Newport, where trains to West Wight had to reverse out of the station before making their way through remotely populated countryside. Space at Newport, the island’s principal town, would also have been a problem.

Although a plan was mooted for the island railways to evade grouping by uniting into a single railway, this came to nothing and in 1923, the Southern Railway took over the island lines and also the ferries from Portsmouth and Lymington. The SR moved quickly to up-date rolling stock and locomotives, largely standardising on 0-44T locomotives, but even so, all rolling stock was late Victorian. In 1929, the main island bus operator, Vectis, was acquired and became Southern Vectis. After nationalisation, the island lines passed to the Southern Region of British Railways, and before long, closures were being made. The first line to close was the branch from Merstone Junction to Ventnor West in 1952, followed in 1953 by the lines to Yarmouth and Freshwater, and the branch from Brading to Bembridge. The line between Newport and Sandown survived until 1956. As a result of the Beeching report, complete closure of the two remaining lines was mooted, albeit with a shuttle service from Ryde Pierhead to Ryde St John’s Road, where a large bus-railway interchange was mooted. In the end, the line from Ryde to Newport and Cowes was closed in 1966 along with the line between Shanklin and Ventnor. The line between Ryde and Shanklin was electrified on the Southern third-rail dc system and ex-Bakerloo Line tube trains modified to run on the island, later being replaced by Northern Line 1938 stock. The ‘Island Line’ survives today, but receives the largest subsidy per passenger of any line on Britain’s railways.

Isle of Wight Central Railway – see Isle of Wight

Isle of Wight Railway – see Isle of Wight