On 23/01/2013 20:06, Stephen Furley wrote:


wrote in message ...

Doesn't have information on the signals, but I appreciate your having
sent me that information in any event.

It's quite an interesting booklet; it's a pity that the re-printing
never happened, but at least it's available on-line now.

The first time I rode on the line I noticed the tracks to the ballpark
station, and wondered what they were; they weren't shown on the map I
had. A girl sitting near to me, quite young, probably late teens but
certainly not old enough to have ever seen the closed lines explained
the entire system as it used to be to me. When I got home I found this
booklet and downloaded a copy. Looking at the map on page 7 it's almost
exactly as she described it, except she didn't mention the Port Ivory
and West Shore branches. I don't know whether she didn't know about
them, or thought they weren't important enough to include.

She did mention steam on the Mount Loretto branch, so maybe she had read
the same booklet.

I could never see the point in the ballpark station; it's so close to
the St. George terminal; not really surprising that they closed it. I
doubt that the re-opening to Arlington will ever happen; it would be
expensive to do, given the problems around the Port Richmond area.

The current and past rail situation on Staten Island very much reminds
me of the Isle of Wight's situation now and in times past.

There is now only one line in regular service, called the Island Line,
which runs north-south down the Isle of Wight's east side from Ryde Pier
Head to Shanklin. The line uses 38ts rolling stock from the London
Underground, and Ryde Pier Head directly connects with a ferry to
Portsmouth that takes 22 minutes to complete a crossing.

Unlike SIRT, however, Island Line conductors do walk through trains and
check tickets as well as collect fares. Unlike the London Underground,
however, Island Line conductors operate the doors and signal train
operators to depart -- something that has not happened here in the big
city in almost 13 years.

(A small clip about London Underground guards, if anybody's interested:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuRT3m_BaVc)

There also used to be an east-west line to Newport from Smallbrook
Junction, though the latter terminus is further south from Ryde.

There were also a number of smaller lines, most of which closed up in
the 50s and 60s.

A non-electrified heritage steam service continues to operate on the
eastwest line from Smallbrook Junction, which I mentioned earlier, but
now goes only as far west as Wootton. That service is aptly named the
Isle of Wight Steam Railway.

Wikipedia indicated that the Isle of Wight Steam Railway could
potentially expand further west back to Newport and even up north to
Ryde St. John's Road, though I wonder how that would work in the latter
case as the section between there and Smallbrook Junction is live track,
on which Island Line regularly operates.

Smallbrook Junction is similar to Friedrichstrasse, BTW, when Berlin was
divided; It was not possible to leave the station if transferring from
the U-Bahn to the S-Bahn, IIRC. Similarly at Smallbrook Junction, you
can only transfer between the Island Line and the IoW Steam Railway and
vice-versa -- there is no exit at all from the station.

Are there many other stations like that in Europe, or the world for that
matter?