Railways on the Isle of Wight Railways on the Isle of Wight There once existed a network of railway lines on the Isle of Wight. They were opened by several companies between 1862 and 1901, and all but the Island Line closed between 1952 and 1966. A further have reopened as the Isle of Wight Steam Railway. The first railway to be built on the island ran for a distance of . It was opened in 1833 on the Nash Estate near Yarmouth. Its usage is presumed to have been for transporting brickmaking materials to and from a jetty on the Solent, and it is not
Politics of the Isle of Wight Hampshire is the police service, which is joint between Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. The Isle of Wight forms a single constituency of the House of Commons, with an electorate of 110,697 (as of 2017). This is by far the largest electorate in the country. The 2018 proposals from the Boundary Commission for England will split the constituency into two. The constituency was traditionally a battleground between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. Between 1974 and 1987, the seat was a Liberal seat, then becoming Conservative until 1997 when the Liberal Democrats won on a reduced Conservative vote. The