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The station master at
Gosport at this time was Mr J.W. Dyson. He also had responsibility for Gosport Road and Stokes Bay pier stations. He was an inventor and was at that time exhibiting models of his patented railway trucks.
He died in 1892 after 46 years service with the company thirteen of them in Gosport. His predecessor also had a long term of service at Gosport. He was Mr. Madigan and he was in post for over fifteen
years and to round off the story Mr Dyson's successor had nineteen years service at Gosport. So over a period of fifty years the stations in the Gosport area had only three different station masters, one
can only assume that the cares of the line did not press too heavily on their shoulders during their respective periods of office.
Gosport Road was gradually
improved .and from October 1893 the service timetable listed the station as 'Gosport Road and Alverstoke' again. Then in July 1894 the South Western engineer reported that the whole of the iron
superstructure of the pier needed renewal at an estimated cost of £6.610. And this work was duly carried out later in 1896.
The End of the line
However by the turn of the
century the line had declined into a secondary route and as from 2nd October 1902 the service was suspended during the winter months opening up again in May for the summer season. During these summer
months the route was still popular and through coaches from the midlands were often attached at Basingstoke and Eastleigh to the South Western's trains. By 1913 six services a day were run to Stokes Bay
but the inevitable happened the journey time increased to three hours fifteen minutes, the same journey time as their rivals in Portsmouth.
Custom declined and soon
the steamer service was reduced and ended completely at the end of the 1913 summer season, but strangely enough the train services carried on into 1914 and through to the winter timetable of that year.
It would be interesting to know where the company thought they were going to get their passengers from as there had been no steamer services to the Isle of Wight for well over six months. No wonder
receipts were low. The use of the pier was very limited but things were kept alive from 1913 onwards by the Royal Thames Yacht Club. Hiring the pavilion at the end of the pier and holding their annual
regattas off the end of the pier
On October 30th 1915 the
stations at Stokes Bay Pier and Gosport Road were closed to the public and during the wartime period the Admiralty used the pier and the end pavilion as a torpedo testing and research station. After the
war in 1922 the admiralty purchased the pier and all the track bed back as far as Gosport Road Station from the South Western. There is evidence that for a time the section of line between the pier and
Fort Road had a siding laid in and for a time gravel was extracted from the area but details of this are sketchy and by the time the line was sold this extraction had ceased many years before. In 1923
the London and South Western Railway was amalgamated into the Southern Railway and it is in that guise that in 1929 the up track was removed, retaining just the triangle at the junction with the
Gosport line which for many years was used to turn locomotives. The down line section through Gosport Road Station was retained and used for a time to store carriages and wagons. The admiralty, in
1933, removed all the track from its section of the line. In 1934 the track through the station was lifted and in 1937 the area was sold to the local council for housing development. However, the
Southern still retained the triangle at the north end of the line.
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