Isle of Wight Steam Railway has launched a new exhibition telling the story of Newport Station, now open at the Newport and Carisbrooke Community Centre.
The display will run until November 2025 at the Newport & Carisbrooke Community Council’s Community Hub at 64 High Street, Newport, PO30 1BA.
Newport Station was once the hub of the Isle of Wight’s railway system, which spanned around 55 miles at its peak. The exhibition begins with the opening of the Island’s railways in the 1860s and covers the early 1920s, when several separate railway companies operated.
In 1923, these companies were grouped into the newly formed Southern Railway. The Southern made significant investments in the Island network before the Second World War. The final part of the exhibition covers the British Rail era from 1948, which saw a gradual decline in railway traffic until, by 1967, only the electrified line from Ryde Pierhead to Shanklin remained in operation. In the 1970s, the Isle of Wight Steam Railway – originally The Wight Locomotive Society – based at Havenstreet, began to re-open the line from Wootton to Smallbrook Junction, the interchange with Island Line.
By Isle of Wight standards, Newport Station was impressively large. In contemporary photographs, it appears like a miniature Clapham Junction. Today, nothing of the station remains, having been cleared during redevelopment works from the 1970s onwards. Most people driving along the dual carriageway through Newport are unaware they are travelling through what was once the heart of the Island’s rail network.
The exhibition includes images from the Isle of Wight Steam Railway’s photographic archive, copies of paintings, archive material, tickets and a small collection of railway-related artefacts.
Curators hope the exhibition will help visitors understand how Newport Station fitted into the layout of the town, and gain a better appreciation of the economic and social importance of Island railways over more than 100 years.
The display also celebrates the 150th anniversary of the opening of the Ryde and Newport Railway in December 1875, and the national ‘Rail 200’ event marking 200 years of railway travel since 1825.
