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Thanks. Since the journey is late evening there is also the likelihood that the barriers will be unmanned anyway, so reducing the risk still further. I could of course eliminate the risk completely by walking back to the Harbour, which takes 15 minutes, but that would seem an excess of caution.

I have an advance ticket from Portsmouth Harbour to London. Am I likely to run into difficulties if I try to board the specified train at Portsmouth & Southsea instead?

Another place that Waverley used to visit but isn’t allowed to now is Bristol.

The most likely occasions are when a high tide is combined with a north-easterly gale, since that is the direction from which the pier is most exposed. But mostly our weather comes from the west or southwest, so the closure doesn’t happen too often. Having said that, I have been caught several...

Brading Cricket club ground is adjacent to the Island Line north of the station. Unfortunately the club is currently defunct.

I don’t have statistics but from observation I would guess that Wightlink at Fishbourne and Red Funnel at East Cowes (not Cowes) split the HGV traffic roughly equally. Some HGVs also use Yarmouth, but that route has much more limited capacity.

As has often been pointed out here, the bus takes nearly twice as long as the train to get from Shanklin to Ryde Esplanade, and does not take you up the pier.

So someone arriving on an on-time catamaran will have either 10 minutes (even hours) or 25 minutes (odd hours) to wait for the train; and someone arriving on the train will have either 12 minutes (even) or 27 minutes (odd) to wait for the cat. Probably the best that can be done at the moment...

Interesting, thanks for posting. It looks as though we’ll have to put up with the 40 minute timetable for the foreseeable. The last response from Mark Dunn seems to imply that it was known from the start of the upgrade works that the 30 minute timetable could not be delivered, whereas the...

Depends what you mean by ‘not far’. Google maps gives a walking time of 14 minutes. Alas, the picture when you arrive on the seafront is decidedly mixed. Several of the hotels, including the former grandest one, the Ocean Hotel, are now derelict and fire-damaged. A depressing sight. But the...

Indeed. And even with the nippier performance of the class 483s the connections at Pierhead were very tight and often missed.

And the new live train indicators on Island Line platforms show the southbound destination as ‘Shanklin for Ventnor’.

The 40-minute timetable is indeed frustrating, meaning that broadly speaking only half of the catamaran/ ferry connections are reasonable. I’m finding that I spend quite a lot of time waiting around at Pierhead. There are now comfy benches, and the opportunity of coffee and snacks from the...

I recall seeing many years ago a ‘puzzle picture’ in an old (1950s) railway magazine. It showed a steam loco with a large circular sign covering the smoke box, bearing the words ‘UP DOWN’. What it meant was indeed puzzling, until it was revealed that it was heading a train carrying sports fans...

Two grounds where Middlesex play have railways running close by where trains can be heard but not seen - Merchant Taylors’ school (Metropolitan Line at Moor Park) and Radlett (MML).

The United Services Ground at Portsmouth, where Hampshire used to play, has a very good view of trains going to and from the Harbour. Essex’s ground at Chelmsford used to give a good view of trains just south of the station. As the line is on embankment you also got good sound effects. But...

l would vote for Aberdour, already mentioned. Also Bishopstone, perhaps architecturally distinguished rather than ‘beautiful’ - a mini example of Southern Art Deco style, with a local Friends group to look after it.

Oh happy days, when there was a ferry scheduled after midnight! Nowadays the last boat from Yarmouth leaves at 2105, a bit early for the Stones. As for running a relief, you would need a crew as well as a boat. No chance of that being available.

Not strictly relevant to the OPs query, but Island Line crews regularly change over at Ryde St Johns.

Palmers Green and Southgate was dual- named until the 1970s. Presumably someone eventually realised that as well as being a mile from the historic village of Southgate it was even further from the modern centre that had grown up around the Piccadilly Line station that had opened in 1933.