convenience of tramcars meant that the line was uncompetitive. At the outbreak of World War I the emergency measures imposed by Government included instructions to the railway companies that unremunerative branch lines should be suspended; the closure took effect on 8 August 1914. Although the line was used for military storage during the war years, it was announced in 1919 that the line would remain closed. It was not until 1923 that the Southern Railway obtained an Act of Parliament authorising abandonment of the railway. Route of the line The course of the line may easily be inferred from subsequent street alignments: it left Fratton station in an eastward direction, and curved to the south on the north and east side of Heidelberg Road and east of Bath Road; it then followed St Ronans Road on the south-east side to the junction of Granada Road and Waverley Road. In more detail that may be described as follows. After its closure, the route of the Southsea Railway line was mostly redeveloped for housing, although its distinctive curved route can still be traced on a modern street map of present-day Portsmouth, and compared with period maps of the early twentieth century. The site of Southsea's terminus station is now occupied by a modern residential cul de sac named Chewter Close, just to the north of Granada Road in Southsea. The original 1885 terminus station building was located at the northern end of today's Chewter Close until its demolition in the 1970s. A mural commemorating the station was unveiled on the northernmost wall in Chewter Close on 26 August 2011, although this wall was not part of the original station and was built as a boundary wall between new houses in Parkstone Avenue and the garage business which continued to use the station building until it's demolition in the 1970s. The smaller, later East Southsea station site is now occupied by modern houses close to the road junction of Chewter Close and Granada Road. Immediately to the north of Chewter Close, the Southsea Railway line followed the route of today's Parkstone Avenue, a mid-twentieth century development of semi-detached houses that covered the southern end of the line. To the north of Parkstone Avenue, the railway route passed through a bridge cutting under the eponymously named Old Bridge Road. The route of the former Southsea Railway continued northwards in a narrow cutting between St.