The Railways of Gosport

The decision to locate a railway and various stations on the Gosport peninsular lies mainly in the intense rivalry between the towns of Portsmouth and Southampton. With the passing of the London and Southampton Railway Company’s Act of 1834 which set up the Portsmouth Satellite Railway Company, with the proposal to construct a mainline to Portsmouth from Bishopstoke (Eastleigh). The Portsmouth residents at that time objected strongly to any company that had the name Southampton in the title and the Portsmouth Town Council would not allow the construction of the line into Portsmouth, and all this before the days of football rivalry! Another complication was that because of the fortifications the line would have to stop at Hilsea, preventing the railway from reaching Portsea Island itself.

ork had already started of the line form the Southampton end and the line, whose Contractor was Thomas Brassey and the Engineer Joseph Locke had already reached Fareham and so after the Portsmouth objections were lodged the plan was confirmed to build the line to Gosport instead and this way giving access to Portsmouth via a cross harbour ferry link. By this time the London and Southampton Railway had already been taken over by the London and South Western Railway so part of Portsmouth’s argument about the Southampton connection no longer held water.

There were also defence difficulties in Gosport but here the ramparts were close to the town centre so the Commanding Officer's refusal to let his walls be breached was strategically of little importance, but the station was near enough to service the Royal Clarence Yard the Royal Navy’s victualling yard yet it did not interfere with the line of fire from the town ramparts. The site on which the station was built was formerly an orchard and fields owned by a local landowner Mr. Issac Legg.

The line from Fareham into Gosport had very little in the way of engineering works on it but the section through the South Downs just north of Fareham was a different matter. The line was to open on 26th July 1841 but a landslip caused by unstable land conditions in a tunnel near Fareham caused a delay and it was eventually opened on 29th November 1841. The first train was hauled from Nine Elms to Gosport by locomotive No 17 ‘Queen’ ,which was new that year and the train consisted of four First Class carriages, and it took 3^1/₂ hours to complete the journey. However the line was closed only four days later because of a land slip in a tunnel north of Fareham, and reopened again on 7th February 1842. The only way that the contractors could solve this problem of the collapse of the tunnel was to excavate the land slip out and create two separate tunnels, one much shorter than the other. In fact these two tunnels are still in daily use today some 170 years later.

This was the start of the railways on the peninsular of Gosport which in its heyday had nine working stations, four branch lines (Lee on the Solent, Stokes Bay, Royal Clarence Yard and the Royal Naval Armaments Depot Frater) one commercial miniature railway with its own station, a narrow gauge beach wind and manual powered railway, plus a manually operated narrow gauge target railway on the Army Ranges. This is not counting the temporary track on the Stokes Bay line which was put in to extract ballast (most of the ballast for the newly constructed Meon Valley line was drawn from here) and the light narrow gauge railways which were frequently moved around the estate building sites in town after the second world war and were often manned by prisoners of war until they were repatriated.

The construction costs of the line were £404,27I over £12,000 more than the original estimate. The station building itself was designed by William Tite (later Sir William] the celebrated designer of the Royal Exchange in London. The station design is of an Italianate classic tradition, which was very popular at that time, and was finished with Tuscan columns with Corinthian capitals, it was built by Mr 0 Nicholson at a cost of £10,980,  Fareham station only cost £l,3921. On a modern note it is very pleasing that in the last few months a new block of apartments in Gosport has been named Tite Court so keeping the name in the publics mind.

During the early years fast trains to London were limited by law to twenty mph. The single fare was 22/- (£1.10p) on the fast service but there was also a slow third class stopping service with open carriages which cost only 8/6 [42^1/₂p]. Mixed trains of first  and second class carriages were also run and charged at the rate of 21/-[£1.05p1 First Class and 15/- [75p] Second Class.

The line was unfortunate enough to suffer from early vandalism when in 1842 two juveniles received sentences of imprisonment, from the Gosport Magistrates, one of one month and the other of three months for throwing stones at trains.

The Royal connection with Gosport railway station began on 8th October 1843 when  Prince Albert came by train to greet His Majesty Louis – Phillipe,  King of France. The first recorded visit to Gosport station by Queen Victoria came six days later when she accompanied the King on his return to France.

Travelling down the line from Fareham the first branch that was encountered was the branch to the Royal Naval Aramaments Depot at Frater and Priddy Hard, the site of an horendous explosion just off one of the piers in the early 1950s. It was to here that armament supplies were either imported or exported to the armed services all over the country.

 The actual date of the laying of the first section of track within the Royal Navy Armaments depots of Gosport would appear to be sometime before 1883. This can be deduced from an article in a May 1883 edition of the 'Hampshire. Telegraph' . This article describes the use of a narrow gauge railway for the movement of armaments into the magazines, at this time it would appear that all the magazines were connected and serviced by this railway, One must now assume that these lines were built sometime before this article was published, probably about forty years earlier when the Royal Naval Laboratories were established in Priddy's Hard, As a consequence of the production of munitions a method of transporting the shells and explosives between the shell filling rooms and the magazines had to be found. It is logical then to assume that the system was first installed between 1848 and 1851.

It appears that there was not only one, but two narrow gauge systems in the Yard come the turn of the last century. We learn from a departmental report of 1904 that two manually operated narrow gauge railways were in use in the yard one 1’6" gauge the other 2'6", To reduce the risk of sparks the rails of the smaller gauge line were made of a type of copper alloy the wheels of the wagons, all 70-80 of them were treated in the same way. The whole system was single track except for shunting sidings for collection and deliveries. To date there is no information on any form of motive power on the line apart from human muscle power, this was not so on the 2'6" gauge system. The 2’6" gauge eventually superseded the narrower one, this broader gauge w_£ and used some 25-30 wagons, their larger size meant that not so many were required as on the narrower system.

In 1929 two battery rail tractors were purchased from Greenwood and Batley and they proved to be so successful that over the next year 6 more were bought. All these tractors worked until the system closed in I960, These locomotives were equipped with flameproof motors, controllers and switchgear but they were still not allowed, to work into the explosive stores and workshops where manual power still remained supreme. These locomotives weighed only 56 cwt and cost £690 when, new and this included delivery. The battery tractors were replaced in 1960 by road tractor units, when this transfer was complete the whole system was closed,

The standard gauge system worked right up to 1990, from its first beginnings in 1912, During the early years, after the railway first came to Gosport, the Depot would collect its armaments stores from Gosport station using a horse and cart. However when it was realised what an advantage a direct rail connection could be the Admiralty approached the L.S.W.R. with a view to laying in an approach siding from the Gosport main line to the depot at Frater, this was in 1910. The projected cost of this extension was £638 and the Admiralty would also be liable for 10% of the expenditure on the line for the next 25 years,  The terms were agreeable to their Lordships as work on the extension began in early 1911 and the official Board of Trade Inspection was conducted on 20th January 1912.   Access to the Frater connection was only via the main line at a point near Oakdene.  Here the extension curved off to the east, it then crossed the Gosport - Fareham road [A32] and on into the depot. The original layout of the system is unknown and there have been so many changes and alterations over the years that it almost impossible to be certain where the original line lay. The only certain thing is that the network extended outside the confines of the Frater depot when a single line was laid to the magazine depot at Priddy's Hard.

The standard gauge line was always locomotive worked and the first of these were built by Andrew Barclay & Co. and over the years Barclay's supplied no less than 9 locomotives, the first being 'Bedenham. No I was an 0-4-0 fire less locomotive. The series of fireless engines, supplied to the yard, worked on a charged reservoir pressure of 160 lhs,/sq. in the steam being provided by one of the boiler houses on site. During average working day the reservoirs would be charged first thing, there would then be enough steam to last until lunch time when they would be charged again, this being enough to complete the working day. The livery of these locomotives was light green with lined panels and vermilion buffers.

                The first actual station on the line was Fort Brockhurst. This was as old as the line and was the junction to the independent Lee on the Solent Railway. The access to this line was via a double shunt from the up main line.

Lee on the Solent

In 1894 a branch was opened the line was never a success and never paid a dividend to its share holders but it lasted until 1931 when passenger traffic was withdrawn and 1935 when the last freight train ran.

Both the Stokes Bay Line which branched off further into town, and the Lee on the Solent Railways were originally built by independent Companies but were eventually taken over by the larger London & South Western Company who ran the Gosport Line. Over 115 years ago Sir John Robinson had a vision   of the fishing  and farming village of Lee - on - the - Solent  becoming one of the South's  major  seaside resorts. To this end he planned vast changes which included improving the transport system in the area. A pier was planned to improve the access by water, new roads were laid out in a clear grid pattern and a new railway was planned to connect Lee-on-the-Solent with the Gosport to Fareham line at Fort Brockhurst.

                          Lee on Solent station

Royal Clarence Yard

In 1846, the renovation of Osborne House at Cowes on the Isle of Wight was completed and upon remembering her previous trip to Gosport the Queen requested that the ramparts be opened ( a request that the Commanding Officer of the Garrison readily agreed) and a 600 yard extension was laid into the Royal Clarence Yard where a special station the Royal Victoria Station was built and partly still stands to this day.

Funeral Plans

With the death of Queen Victoria hasty funeral plans had to be made as she had died on 22nd January 1901 at Osborne House. On 1st February of that year her body was brought across the Solent and lay in state overnight behind the Guard House of St George Barracks.

The following day many crowned heads of Europe and their escorts boarded the funeral train at the Royal Victoria Station and accompanied the body to London and thence onto Frogmore and her interment. A unique and very important occasion not only in the history of the Gosport branch but also of the town itself

Stokes Bay

In 1863 a branch line was opened via a connecting triangle on the main line and about half a mile from the main Gosport Station, to Stokes Bay where it joined up with a ferry link to Ryde on the Isle of Wight. The ferries on this service ceased in Spring 1914 and the rail link was withdrawn on 30th October 1915. The pier remained for many years after closure and for some time was used by the Admiralty as a torpedo testing station.

Stokes Bay Pier

Gosport Station Daily Trade

The railway station was very busy in the middle of the 19^th century, particularly with the carriage of coal and other freight. However the opening of a direct service from London to Portsmouth in 1847 began to have a heavy impact on “Portsmouth’s station in Gosport “ as it was known in Portsmouth, but never by that name on Gosports’s side of the water.

Wartime

As the pace of war increased in 1914 so the role of the station revived as Gosport’s role as Victualler to the Navy increased. There was in influx of great numbers of supplies to and from the Royal Clarence Yard, also large numbers of troop movements and after the start of the war the transportation of the wounded en route to Haslar. After the First Word War rail traffic began to decrease again and in 1934 the twin track to Fareharn was singled. In an attempt at economy in 1937 unsuccessful experiments were made with a rubber tyred ,petrol engined, rail bus which was developed by the French Michelin Tyre Company.

With the coming of the Second World War the station saw much military activity again including supplies, hospital trains and trains carrying prisoners of war on their way to the local internment camp. On the night of 10th March 1941 the station received a direct incendiary hit from an aerial attack the main damage being to the roofing which caught light and collapsed. The end of the hostilities in 1945 once again diminished Gosport Station’s role and long before Dr Beeching’s famous axe the line was threatened with closure. Finally on 6th June 1953 scheduled passenger services from Gosport ceased although freight working remained until 30th January 1969 when all rail traffic to Gosport station ceased.

The following is a brief survey of what i believe has survived but additional information would be helpful.

Browndown. Closed 1930 concrete platform survived until 1961 when it was demolished for a new road.

Elmore  halt     some evidence  remained  at least until   1960     (  pictures  of demolition are in the society archives - ed.)

Fort brockhurst    closed 1953 platforms and building survive. ( pictures of demolition of other buildings are in the society archives. - ed )

Gosport closed 1953. Closed to goods traffic 1969. Platforms and war damaged buildings remain ( statutory protection ) nothing left of goods facilities.

Gosport road closed 1915. Obliterated. ( platform surface still in place below the basement level of the telephone exchange. - ed)

T.f.f.onsot.p_fnt closed 1930. Closed to goods traffic 1935. Building remains.

Privett ( later fort gomer )   closed 1930 concrete platform survived until 1961 when demolished for new road ( pictures of the demolition are in the society archives - ed)

Stokes Bay Pier station closed 1915. Final demolition date not known.