The Future
The future of the railways is secure until 2017, when the existing National Rail South Western franchise runs out. There are numerous plans for the island's rail system, including:
- the extension of steam services from Smallbrook Junction to Ryde St John's Road station
- conversion of the Island Line to a tramway and extending into Shanklin town centre
- extension of steam railway to reach Newport
- extension of Island Line into Ventnor along the old route (first considered in 1967)
- extension of the Island Line to Gosport, Hampshire via a new Solent tunnel
Read more about this topic: Railways On The Isle Of Wight
Famous quotes related to the future:
“Perfect present has no existence in our consciousness. As I said years ago in Erewhon, it lives but upon the sufferance of past and future. We are like men standing on a narrow footbridge over a railway. We can watch the future hurrying like an express train towards us, and then hurrying into the past, but in the narrow strip of present we cannot see it. Strange that that which is the most essential to our consciousness should be exactly that of which we are least definitely conscious.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)