necessity of connecting Newport revived the idea of a railway between them, and on 25 July 1872 the Ryde and Newport Railway was authorised by Parliament. The share capital was £65,000. The Isle of Wight Railway agreed to the R&NR using its line to get access to Ryde, and to its station there, in exchange for running powers for the IoWR between Ryde and Newport. A contract for the construction was awarded to Barnett and Gale on 1 October 1872. Instead of building its own line into Ryde, it arranged with the Isle of Wight Railway to join it at Smallbrook, a little over south of St John's Road; IoWCR trains were to run to Ryde on track provided by the IoWR. A temporary connection was laid in at Smallbrook to assist in the delivery of materials for construction purposes. Work continued rapidly, but early in 1874 Barnett and Gale got into financial difficulties, and the contract was transferred to J & G Taylor. The construction and land acquisition expended much of the company's available cash, and a director, George Young, personally made money available to continue. In 1875, the railway company obtained authorisation to raise additional share capital (in fact, the £30,000 of preference shares could only be sold at a 30% discount). The original Cowes and Newport Railway station at Newport had been a very basic construction, and it had always been the intention to construct a new station for the use of the C&NR, the R&NR and the IoW(NJ)R; this involved agreeing on the crossing of the Medina at Newport with the borough corporation, and apportioning the costs. This took some time and the bridge, to be a swing bridge, was agreed in January 1875. By this time the line had been completed to the end of the bridge location. When completed, the bridge was operated manually by windlass; the two tracks could be opened individually and there was a long approach viaduct. The IoWR laid a second track alongside its own from Smallbrook to Ryde. There was to be no operational junction at this stage, and the two companies each were to work over one of the two single lines. Lt Colonel Hutchinson visited the IoWCR in November 1875, but refused to sanction the opening of the line to passenger traffic as the station accommodation, in particular, was incomplete. On 17 December he visited again, and