![]() Brading station seen with the restored passing loop and second platform | |||||
General information | |||||
Location | Brading, Isle of Wight England | ||||
Coordinates | 50°40′41″N1°08′20″W / 50.678°N 1.139°W | ||||
Grid reference | SZ609868 | ||||
Managed by | Island Line | ||||
Platforms | 2 | ||||
Other information | |||||
Station code | BDN | ||||
Classification | DfT category F2 | ||||
History | |||||
Opened | 23 August 1864 | ||||
Original company | Isle of Wight Railway | ||||
Post-grouping | Southern Railway | ||||
Key dates | |||||
1 January 1967 | Closed for electrification | ||||
20 March 1967 | Reopened | ||||
28 October 1988 | Signal box & platform 2 closed, removal of passing loop | ||||
3 January 2021 | Closed for upgrade works | ||||
1 November 2021 | Reopened; passing loop reinstalled, recommissioning of platform 2 | ||||
Passengers | |||||
2018/19 | ![]() | ||||
2019/20 | ![]() | ||||
2020/21 | ![]() | ||||
2021/22 | ![]() | ||||
2022/23 | ![]() | ||||
Listed Building –Grade II | |||||
Feature | Brading Railway Station Main Building | ||||
Designated | 14 April 1986 | ||||
Reference no. | 1034363 [1] | ||||
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Brading railway station is a Grade II listed [1] railway station serving Brading on the Isle of Wight,England. It is located on the Island Line from Ryde to Shanklin. Owing to its secluded countryside location,it is one of the quietest stations on the island.
The station was opened in 1864 by the Isle of Wight Railway on their initial Ryde-Shanklin line. In 1882 it became a junction station,when the Brading-Bembridge branch line opened as part of the Brading Haven reclamation scheme. The branch line closed to passengers in 1953 and completely in 1957.
Under Southern Railway ownership,the passing loop was extended southwards from Brading to Sandown in 1927,forming a second section of double track on the Island Line. [2]
Brading was one of the last stations on the British Rail network to retain gas lighting,with the fittings converted to mercury vapour usage in 1985. As of 2010 some of the fittings were still in use,now using compact fluorescent bulbs.
Brading signalbox closed on 28 October 1988,and the passing loop at Brading station was removed,meaning that only one platform remained in use. This meant trains could no longer run at even 30-minute intervals on the line. [3] By 1998 the signal box and branch platforms were very overgrown and the buildings were threatened with demolition. In August 2007 Brading Town Council announced a plan to revamp the exterior of the station buildings and former signal box,and have used grants and volunteers to gradually reopen different parts of the station,with the whole of the station and signal box fully opening to the public in March 2010 for the first time in 40 years. Both the signal box [4] and main station building [1] are Grade II listed,along with the station building on the east platform, [5] the footbridge, [6] and the station house. [7]
The current footbridge was installed in the late 1990s,as part of Railtracks Station Regeneration Programme - the original bridge was no longer safe. The replacement is an identical copy of the original,which was taken to the McAlpine collection in Oxfordshire.
An announcement on 16 September 2019 confirmed that a passing loop would be reinstated at Brading to allow trains to run at regular half-hourly intervals. [8] £1 million to fund building the passing loop was to be from local sources [8] with £300,000 from the Isle of Wight Council and the remainder from local businesses through the Solent Local Enterprise Partnership. [9] A second platform would be opened to passenger use,according to the brief given to potential contractors for the work on the upgrade [10] and the level crossing to the south of the station would be upgraded to give step-free access to the southbound platform. [11] This work was completed in 2021. [12]
The restored signal box and station buildings are now home to a heritage centre,café,museum and a Tourist Information Point, [13] along with a bike hire shop.
No railway staff are present at the station,with tickets available from an automatic machine or from the guard on board the train.
All services at Brading are operated by Island Line using Class 484 EMUs.
The typical off-peak service in trains per hour is: [14]
These services call at all stations,except Smallbrook Junction,which is served only during operating dates for the Isle of Wight Steam Railway.
Preceding station | ![]() | Following station | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Island Line | Steam operating days only | |||
Disused railways | ||||
Terminus | British Rail Southern Region | St Helens |
The Island Line is a railway line on the Isle of Wight which runs along the island's east coast and links Ryde Pier Head with Shanklin. Trains connect at Ryde Pier Head with passenger ferries to Portsmouth Harbour, and these ferries in turn connect with the rest of the National Rail network via the Portsmouth Direct Line. The line also connects to the Isle of Wight Steam Railway, a heritage railway, at Smallbrook Junction. For much of its length the line runs alongside the A3055, criss-crossing this road by means of the Ryde Tunnel and bridges at Rowborough, Morton Common, Lake Hill and Littlestairs.
The Isle of Wight Steam Railway is a heritage railway on the Isle of Wight. The railway passes through 5+1⁄2 miles (9 km) of countryside from Smallbrook Junction to Wootton station, passing through the small village of Havenstreet, where the line has a station, headquarters and a depot. At Smallbrook Junction, the steam railway connects with the Island Line.
The ancient 'Kynges Towne' of Brading is the main town of the civil parish of the same name. The ecclesiastical parish of Brading used to cover about a tenth of the Isle of Wight. The civil parish now includes the town itself and Adgestone, Morton, Nunwell and other outlying areas between Ryde, St Helens, Bembridge, Sandown and Arreton. Alverstone was transferred to the Newchurch parish some thirty years ago.
The British Rail Class 483 electric multiple units were originally built as 1938 tube stock units for London Underground. They were extensively refurbished between 1989 and 1992 by Eastleigh Works, for use on services on the Isle of Wight's Island Line. This was despite having already been used for nearly 50 years on the London Underground network. The units replaced the even older and life-expired British Rail Classes 485 and 486 units which were introduced in 1967, but were originally built as 'Standard' stock units for the London Electric Railway in 1923.
The Isle of Wight Central Railway (IoWCR) was a railway company on the Isle of Wight, United Kingdom. It was formed in 1887 by the merging of three earlier railways, the Cowes and Newport Railway, the Ryde and Newport Railway and the Isle of Wight Railway,.
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.
Farncombe railway station opened in 1897 as a minor stop on the Portsmouth Direct Line between Guildford and Godalming, England. It is said to have been built at the instigation of General Sir Frederick Marshall, a director of the London and South Western Railway Company, who lived nearby at Broadwater.
Sandown railway station is a railway station serving Sandown on the Isle of Wight, England. It is located on the Island Line from Ryde to Shanklin.
Shanklin railway station is a Grade II listed railway station serving Shanklin on the Isle of Wight. It is the present terminus of the Island Line from Ryde, although the line used to continue to Wroxall and Ventnor. The station now has one platform with a ticket office and a small shop, the second platform is now in use as a flower bed. The former subway has been filled in.
Smallbrook Junction railway station is a railway station on the Isle of Wight, England. It is unusual because it has no public access but exists purely to provide a connection between two rail systems.
Ryde St John's Road is a railway station on the Island Line, and serves the town of Ryde, Isle of Wight. The station is 1.25 mi (2 km) south of Ryde Pier Head—the Island Line's northern terminus.
Ryde Pier Head railway station is one of three stations in the town of Ryde on the Isle of Wight. Situated at the end of the town's pier, it is adjacent to the terminal for the Wightlink fast catamaran service connecting the island with Portsmouth on the English mainland. Passengers can use this to connect with the rest of the National Rail network at Portsmouth Harbour station, which is adjacent to the Portsmouth terminal. Through rail tickets for travel via Pier Head station are available to and from other stations on the Isle of Wight. These include travel on the catamaran service to or from Portsmouth as appropriate.
Island Line is a brand of South Western Railway which runs the 8.5-mile (13.7 km) Island Line on the Isle of Wight. A stand-alone franchise from 1996 until 2007, it then became part of the South Western franchise operated by South West Trains until August 2017 and since by South Western Railway.
Ryde Esplanade railway station serves the town of Ryde on the Isle of Wight, and forms part of the Ryde Transport Interchange. Located on the sea front, it is the most convenient station for the majority of the town. Ryde Esplanade is also the location of the principal ticket office and all lost property facilities for the Island Line. The larger St John's Road station houses the area office and is next to Ryde Traincare Depot, where all in-house maintenance for the line takes place.
Wootton railway station is former railway station, and now a recreated heritage station, at Wootton on the Isle of Wight, off the south coast of England.
There are several modes of Transport on the Isle of Wight, an island in the English Channel.
There once existed a 55+1⁄2-mile (89.3 km) network of railway lines on the Isle of Wight, which operated both as a self-contained railway network, and as links to ferry services between the island and the South coast of Great Britain. The routes were opened by several companies between 1862 and 1901 and modernised after The Grouping in the 1920s. Most of them were permanently closed between 1952 and 1966, whilst the 8+1⁄2-mile-long (13.7 km) Island Line was temporarily closed in 1966 and rebuilt for electric train services, introduced in 1967. Replacement trains were introduced in 1990, and again in 2021 along with a major renewal of the line. A further 5+1⁄2 miles (8.9 km) have reopened as a heritage line known as the Isle of Wight Steam Railway and there have been several proposals to expand the network further since the 1960s, either with conventional heavy rail or by conversion to light rail.
Although the railway network in Great Britain has some of the smallest loading gauges in the world, the vast bulk of it is still capable of operating full sized vehicles. However, British Rail, together with its predecessors and successors have, on occasion, been required to operate passenger trains to an even smaller loading gauge and have, as a consequence, obtained rolling stock identical to that of the "deep tube" lines of London Underground; these are lines built using the tunneling shield method, that were, by necessity, smaller than those lines built using the cut-and-cover method. In 1892, a Parliamentary Committee headed by James Stansfeld recommended that such lines be in tunnels with a minimum diameter of 11 ft 6in. Two routes operated by British Rail required the use of such deep-tube rolling stock, the Waterloo & City Line in London, and the Island Line on the Isle of Wight.
The British Rail Class 484 D-Train is a class of electric multiple unit built by rolling stock manufacturer Vivarail which operates on the Island Line on the Isle of Wight. Based on the British Rail Class 230 diesel multiple unit, the units are part of the Vivarail D-Train family, converted from London Underground D78 Stock originally manufactured in the late 1970s and early 1980s by Metro-Cammell.
Fawley Hill Railway is a privately owned heritage railway on the Fawley Hill estate of the late Sir William McAlpine at Fawley in Buckinghamshire, England.