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
Geology of the Isle of Wight Geology of the Isle of Wight The geology of the Isle of Wight is dominated by sedimentary rocks of Cretaceous and Paleogene age. This sequence was affected by the late stages of the Alpine Orogeny, forming the Isle of Wight monocline, the cause of the steeply-dipping outcrops of the Chalk Group and overlying Paleogene strata seen at The Needles, Alum Bay and Whitecliff Bay. Rocks of Devonian, Triassic and Jurassic age are known to be present in the subsurface of the island from boreholes and interpreted seismic reflection profiles. Up to 389 m of presumed Devonian sedimentary rocks been proved