As part of our Isle of Wight Railways series, Island Echo examines the various plans put forward at the turn of the 20th century to connect the Isle of Wight to the mainland through a railway tunnel.
The 1st proposal for a cross-Solent tunnel was made in 1871, when engineer Charles Vignoles advocated a tunnel between Stone Point (near Calshot) and Cowes. Practical steps were taken to turn the idea into a reality with test borings completed.
In 1878, Vignoles’ plan was resurrected by railway engineer Hamilton Fulton, who proposed a 2-mile tunnel between Stone Point and Gurnard Bay, which would then connect with the Cowes to Newport Railway.
The next idea – suggested in 1886 – was to connect Stokes Bay in Gosport with Ryde. A 3-mile tunnel was planned with a fort halfway along. The government was to pay for the tunnel to the fort, with private investors funding the remainder of the tunnel to Ryde. Nothing came of the idea.
Meanwhile, plans were afoot to connect West Wight to the mainland. In 1900, a Daily Telegraph article stated that a train journey from London to Newport took between 4 and 5 hours but that a tunnel could cut the time to just 2-and-a-quarter hours. The cost of building a tunnel was estimated to be £750,000 (£118million in today’s values).
A Bill to form the South Western & Isle of Wight Junction Railway passed into law on 26th July 1901. The Bill envisaged the railway branching off the Lymington line before entering the tunnel at Keyhaven. It was then to be bored 46ft below the seabed, above which was 150ft of water.
The railway was to emerge on the left bank of the Yar, where it would separate into 2 viaducts – the 1st joining the Freshwater, Yarmouth. and Newport Railway (FYN) to Freshwater and the 2nd heading towards Yarmouth and Newport.
The line was to be 7-and-a-half miles in length with a tunnel length of 2-and-a-half miles. The cost was estimated at £550,000 (£86million in today’s values), of which £400,000 was the cost of the tunnel.
However, the London and South Western Railway (LSWR) were not overly keen on the idea of a tunnel to the Isle of Wight, for reasons that are familiar today. The LSWR had invested heavily in ferries from Portsmouth to Ryde and Lymington to Yarmouth, having bought 2 steamers in 1893 and 1901.
Any tunnel would be unnecessary and unwanted competition.
In 1903, there was a 2nd Solent Tunnel Act, that envisaged the building of a harbour at Keyhaven for transatlantic liners. In 1904 and 1911, further Acts were passed extending the time limit for building the Solent tunnel.
There were also proposals for an electric tube railway from Stokes Bay to Ryde put forward in 1913. According to the Railway Gazette, the cost of the 4-mile line was estimated at £750,000 (£111million in today’s values).
The year in which plans for a Solent tunnel came closest to fruition was 1914. Trial borings were carried out near Fort Victoria to a depth of 260ft. Up until the end of the summer, there were reports that construction was about to start. The Isle of Wight Times claimed that the tunnel scheme was being backed by 1 of the world’s leading financial firms, which aimed to develop the south and west of the Island.
Then – on 28th July 1914 – World War I broke out. The scheme was put on hold for the duration of the conflict.
In 1920, a deputation from the Isle of Wight met with the then Transport Minister Sir Eric Geddes, hoping to see the tunnel scheme revived. Geddes told the deputation that the costs had now risen to £2million (£114million in today’s values). He asked whether the Isle of Wight would be interested in a train ferry.
The Solent tunnel scheme remained a real possibility until 1927, when the Ministry of Transport informed the County Council that it did not anticipate sufficient demand to justify the costs of construction.
A whimsical proposal for a tunnel between the Isle of Wight and the mainland emerged in 1932 when Mr Dendy Marshall proposed an atmospheric railway through which carriages would be blown through by powerful fans. His idea was published in The Engineer. Unsurprisingly, it garnered little support.
The idea of connecting the Isle of Wight with the mainland by means of a tunnel has been revived in recent years through the proposed Solent Freedom Tunnel and is attracting increasing support. Sadly, a rail link is no longer envisaged …
The history of the attempts to connect the Isle of Wight with the mainland by means of a rail tunnel is shown in the video below:
IF you need to travel to the mainland so very often, to, in your opinion, warrant the building of a tunnel, then MOVE there.
Without the tunnel, the island will become one of the most deprived areas in the uk, there is no appeal for companies to set up on the Isle of Wight because of the horrific transport costs, there is no appeal for people to move to the Isle of Wight, because of lack of jobs, and also looking at the Isle of Wight from the mainland regularly reading the media it seems a drug, drink drive infested island, change needs to happen , if it doesn’t it will simply become a rotten island with an aging population , now the aging population on the island they have currently have some element of wealth however the next generation aging population if it’s anything to go by It will be an island full of retired dole dossers
Talking rubbish
The horse Mr Edd was more intelligent than you.In fact all horses are more intelligent than you.
Can the IOW Council afford the many Billions of Pounds to build your tunnel for you? Or raise the funds from the private sector?
Or do you expect the rest of the UK to pay for your tunnel?
If your tunnel is ever built, how will the roads on the island cope with all the extra traffic that your tunnel will attract? If anyone can actually afford the toll to use it, of course
IW Council cannot even afford to place Double yellow lines
along Great Preston Road to STOP the idiots in the old council houses
parking on pavements, so no chance of a tunnel.
many people are quite blind, having a tunnel would not increase the traffic on the island.. as many on island would be also going to mainland.. unless someone like you built the tunnel as you would make it one way… !!!
The IOW Council would not be responsible to pay for the tunnel. Better to pay for a tunnel than the UK pay £7 million a day to house illegal so called refugees. I know people on the mainland who would love to visit the IOW and spend money but they don’t want to come to a place that is now a dump. Why is it a dump? Its because there is no investment.
Funny then that so many people move to the Island. Almost certainly because it is an island. We like our island as it is, not a dormitory of large towns on the mainland. The ferries are part of the fun.
The ferries are fun Danny.
I can’t stop laughing how much they charge when making a booking.
I thought all criminals were inside, obviously not.
So true Danny.
The Island will always be Dinosaur Island unless it builds a
Tunnel or Bridge.
Islanders rely on the mainland for decent Health care, if it was not for
The Hospitals in Southampton and Portsmouth many Islanders would die.
St Mary’s does not provide all the services an Hospital should.
Retired old dosser some people have some really weird outlooks on life. I for one am 12mth from retirement and financially comfortable with my pitence you are so funny oh and I live on the drug infested dunk driving Island. Commonly known as gods green isle . Oh and maybe our police are better at catching so called people than your local rossers lol
so that’s it then..while the suns shines hopefully next 10 billion years there will never be a tunnel …never.
I’m in my early 30s and work 100% remotely, top 0.1% PAYÉE, and moved to IOW during Covid due to our nature. I now spend a lot in local cocktail bars, restaurants, hire craftsmen, a cleaning lady, visit local coffee shops etc.
If IOW keeps protecting its nature and beaches I’m going to stay here. If not then I can move whenever else. But so far I liked it here.
For a young couple like ours NHS on IOW is fine. We don’t need it often anyway cause, well, we’re young.
Driving on IOW is some kind of a meme, true, but mostly because there’s nothing else happening worthy to write about.
More nature, clean beaches (no sewage!), more cycling paths (millennials don’t care much about cars) and more of my remote working friends would come.
And also people are nice here
About time to resurrect this tunnel I think.
Dont like the title Solent Freedom Tunnel. US heavy bombers often follow the word freedom these days.
How much would a road tunnel cost? It’s a great idea, but would it benefit the island that much?
Yes it would. A road tunnel would be cheaper to get across either way, anytime night or day. new business and better jobs, more NHS workers, more dentists and doctors, all because it would be much cheaper to cross the Solent, no cancellations, no staff shortages,, or broken down ferries to worry about. local commuters could get to work on time, less time lost due to broken connections.. many items would be cheaper here too as would not have to pay for the ferry !!..
In 1995 a tunnel shorter then a Solent one was proposed to take it away from Stonehenge on the main truck Rd A303, nearly 30 years later after millions spent on studies, plans, planning, feasibility, appeals and many more enquiries nothing is built. This is on a important route carrying heavy traffic not a small holiday island with not much industry and not much of a working population. Money will be spent on schemes to relive traffic not increase it. It’ll be cheaper to give everyone on the island free travel
Island residents should pay no more than £20
for a return crossing and to be honest that is too much.
A day return costs at least £70 (criminal)
Some of my mates got rich off that A303 tunnel scheme. I’m hoping I’ll get rich too from a Solent tunnel scheme.
except when ferries break, staff shortages etc etc …
I don’t think a tunnel is going to fit in with the governments plan to restrict all travel to 15 minute cities….
You do realise “15 minutes” is a metaphor for “things you need often should be close so you don’t waste too much of your time” and not some exact count that anyone is going to keep track of and deny you going more than than, or stop you from moving to a desolated meadows somewhere in Scotland far away from everything if you like it?
Do you seriously think it’s LITERALLY “15 minutes and that’s it, no more movement” or do you have some weird agenda behind it?
This concept has been done for at least 50 years now but only recently I started to see some conspiracy theories and can’t fathom how they’re created.
I like that I can walk 7 minutes to my GP appointment and not drive for 2 hours. Seems kinda… good to me?
A 15 minute is the start of controlling your life pal,
don’t ever think they are helping you.
Look what’s happening in Oxford, if you travel outside more than
100 times you will be fined.
If you can walk 7 minutes to your GP appointment you are very lucky on two counts, one that you are able to get a GP appointment and two, that you live so close to a GP surgery.
Either that or you are delusional and happy to walk blindly into being controlled by the government.
You can travel to France much cheaper than crossing the Solent.
What does Barbeque Bob have to say about that?
I quite often find that it’s people that have moved here that kick off the most and want to controll the place and keep it isolated.
Having lived here all my five decades of life, I would welcome a fixed link. To be able to make travel plans that are not restricted by poisonously priced ferry’s that are unreliable and restrictive in time would be great.
The evidence for a decline in living standards doesn’t stack up given reflections from other linked islands.
Take the isle of sky as one such example.
The Solent Freedom Tunnel is a disastrous idea – the last thing anyone needs these days is another motorway to encourage petrolheads to speed up climate change-induced sea level rise.
The rail schemes all failed through lack of a large enough population on the island to support the massive construction, maintenance & operational costs. Had the Southern Railway been able to run direct electric trains from Waterloo, it’s all too easy to envisage the island being swamped by commuters with Shanklin and Ventnor turned into mere dormitory towns, devoid of all their charms. So perhaps it’s just as well the schemes failed.
Mind you, if Wight were part of Norway the tunnel would have been built years ago.