Smallbrook Junction - Least Used Station Isle of Wight 

clearly a scripted video, with knowledge gleaned from other enthusiasts :P

He has been here before

@@ChapatiMan No he hasn't.

@@ChapatiMan You Missed The Joke

I don't think the Isle of Wight is real. It's just a green screen construct, so Geoff clearly can't have been there.

Almost Beta?

Wait what! are we all wearing meta visors?

Another station on a preserved railway where that could happen is Manuel Junction, on the Boness and Kinneil Railway. There is no pedestrian access there, but at least there, as it's the end of the line, and the train runs round, everyone HAS to get back on. If there was a failure of the preserved train, then that's where you could have a problem, but at least the crew would be on hand to help.

There is an emergency access path to the north so you would never get totally stuck - but it would always be safer for a train to pick you up if they were available

I wonder why the Island Line couldn't have made the next train stop in that situation. There would have been more of them, just not timetabled to stop!

@@HuggyBob62 the previous trains on the Island were notorious for breaking down to the point there were no trains available.

I wonder how that worked financially. I suppose the electric railway paid, as it was in effect a rail replacement train for their failed service?

I was just going to say the very same thing Ashey deserves a mention!

To be fair, all other least used stations only count National Rail stations.

I was going to raise the same point I went last year spent 2 hours there on 3 occasions and no one else

The steam trains don't actually stop at Ashey.

@@tonycook603 Ashey can sometimes be used as a request stop although not many people go there. Plus once a year there is the Ashey Scurry where the trains regularly stop at the station for the event.

So would Geoff

I'd guess Whippingham given the only thing nearby is the crematorium. Then again, some of the rural stops on the FYN might be contenders. Oddly enough, the Ventnor West branch might be too well used - there's lots of housing near the sites of Whitwell and Godshill stations that simply didn't exist when the line was open... If course there's any housing on the site of Ventnor West Station itself so that would be a slight problem - not to mention the Newport issue :D

That's because the Isle of "White" doesn't exist. 🤣

@@gothica64 Opps! Bloody autocorrect 🤬

The Isle of Wight was literally an island of air braking in a sea of vacuum. They didn't really need the stopping power of the Westinghouse Air Brake on the island but got it anyway because they tended to use second (or third) hand rolling stock from the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway!

Dovey Junction has a path I think which is a 10 to 15 minute walk, I remember at the top of the path takes you to a road and a Disused Station when looking it up

There are a few without any public road access, but I don't think any of them offer interchange facilities, except for long distance walkers or cross-country cyclists!

Contrary to popular belief, Dovey Junction DOES actually have an entrance/exit! It’s only a footpath (so, still no road access) but it does exist. And regarding stations without public road access, there exist precisely 7 such stations on the National Rail network. Aside from Smallbrook Junction, these are: • Altnabreac (far north of Scotland); • Corrour (elsewhere in Scotland); • the aforementioned Dovey Junction; • Berney Arms (Norfolk); • Longcross (Surrey); • Middlewood (near Manchester). The first four are, not coincidentally, often listed as the four most isolated stations in the country. Middlewood is perhaps my favourite example! When it was built, it had four platforms on two levels (Tamworth-style) and, just like Smallbrook today, it was a purely interchange station with no entrance or exit. When the high-level line closed under Beeching, the old trackbed was converted into a footpath, which (somewhat ironically) gave direct public access to the low-level platforms! And then there’s Longcross, which is kinda boring.

@Sleeper Train Fan you can hike between Corrour and the next station if you don’t mind walking the moor.

Middlewood has no direct road access but can be reached after a 5 to 10min walk

Scotland has 29 council areas that have stations in them. There is no reason why a series couldn't be made about these just as it has in England and Wales. There must be a least-used station in Northern Ireland too, not to mention the Isle of Man!

And least used station on Alderney 🤣