Железная дорога Истли – Фэрхем: История и современные проблемы

The Eastleigh–Fareham line is the railway line from Eastleigh to Fareham in England. At Eastleigh, trains join the South West Main Line for onward travel to Basingstoke and London Waterloo. At Fareham trains join the West Coastway Line for onward travel to Portsmouth. Services and stations on this line are operated by South Western Railway. It has an approximately hourly service in each direction. It is a useful diversionary route, used when the Portsmouth Direct Line is closed or when the lines around Southampton are closed. The line was electrified with 750 V DC third rail; electric services commencing May 1990.

Construction of the branch line from Bishopstoke (now Eastleigh) station to Gosport, terminating "outside the fortifications", was approved in 1839. In Portsmouth, there were strong objections to the city being served by a company with rival city Southampton featuring prominently in its name, and so the same act of parliament renamed the company from the London and Southampton Railway to the London and South Western Railway (LSWR). Constructed by Thomas Brassey's company, the line was opened on 29 November 1841 but closed four days later due to concerns about the stability of the tunnel at Fareham. In particular the chief inspecting officer, Sir Frederick Smith, remarked that the line at this point passed "through a soil which has baffled all calculation", with the banks of the cutting so steep that "there is scarcely any slope at which it would stand". The line reopened on 7th February 1842.

In 2014 the line experienced a further landslip near Botley which resulted in services being suspended for over a month. This was followed by further temporary repairs in the aftermath of Storm Frank in 2016. Following these incidents, Network Rail temporarily closed the line in June 2022 to implement "a permanent fix to keep trains running safely". The closure was set to last for 9 days and as well as the main task of repairing the cutting near Fareham Tunnel and reducing its gradient, the company sought to carry out 42 other jobs on the line at the same time including winter proofing the points, clearing litter and graffiti and replacing freight sidings. The project cost £2.28 million and involved 20 construction vehicles, 10 trains and hundreds of engineers working a combined 7,500 hours, in which 5,000 tonnes of earth were removed from the cutting and an 80 metre long retaining wall was built.

The line was closed again for five days in early 2024 for works near Fareham Tunnel to prevent a landslip. Heavy rainfall caused land movement which was observed by Network Rail engineers, leading to the work that involved drilling 260 steel nails, each one long, into the sides of the cutting to prevent the soil slipping onto the railway. Network Rail confirmed this was a different part of the cutting from where the 2022 works had taken place, and no problems with land movement were detected around those earlier works.

The Borough of Eastleigh's 2019 local plan discussed the possibility of a new station on the line at Allington, which would need to have "two platforms of sufficient length to accommodate up to 12 car trains" and would cost around £8 9 million. A joint statement from the borough council and Network Rail indicated that it was unlikely the station would be built.

The line has retained all the stations that it had when it opened, apart from Bishop's Waltham, a station reached by the Bishops Waltham branch line from Botley, and Knowle Halt. In addition, a new station, Hedge End, was opened in 1990.