class main line to Southampton and Stokes Bay (for the Isle of Wight), rivalling the LSWR routes. The reality was that it was dependent on the LSWR to work it, and that as a single line with some prodigious gradients, it could not hope to compete. It settled down to existence as a local line, all the time complaining that the LSWR was not doing enough to promote it. It never succeeded financially, and it was taken over by the LSWR in 1884. It was closed in 1973, but part of the route was adopted by the Watercress Line, a heritage railway organisation, which continues operations at present. Basingstoke and Alton Light Railway The Basingstoke and Alton Light Railway was opened in 1901. The intervening terrain was very thinly populated, and it has been suggested by Kelly and others that the line was built as a blocker for a proposed GWR line that would have entered LSWR territory. The line never made money and was closed to passengers in 1932, and completely 1937. Bishops Waltham In 1863 the Bishop's Waltham Railway Company opened its branch line between Bishop's Waltham and the LSWR's Botley station on the Eastleigh to Fareham Line. The LSWR worked the branch line. It was never commercially successful and the LSWR took over the local company in 1881. It closed to passengers in 1932 and to goods in 1962. On to Dorchester and Weymouth The Southampton and Dorchester Railway The London and Southampton Railway promoters had lost the first battle for authorisation to make a line to Bristol, but the objective of opening up the country in the southwest and west of England remained prominent. In fact it was an independent promoter, Charles Castleman, a solicitor of Wimborne Minster, who assembled support in the South West, and on 2 February 1844 proposed to the LSWR that a line might be built from Southampton to Dorchester: he was rebuffed by the LSWR, who were looking towards Exeter as their next objective. Castleman went ahead and developed his scheme, but relations between his supporters and the LSWR were extremely tense, and Castleman formed a Southampton and Dorchester Railway, and negotiated with the Great Western Railway instead. The Bristol & Exeter Railway, a broad gauge company allied to the GWR, reached Exeter on 1 May 1844, and the GWR was promoting the Wilts, Somerset and Weymouth Railway which was to