The Fareham-Gosport Line was built as the southern half of the Bishopstoke to Gosport Branch Railway, opened by the London and South Western Railway

London and South Western Railway

The London and South Western Railway was a railway company in England from 1838 to 1922. Its network extended from London to Plymouth via Salisbury and Exeter, with branches to Ilfracombe and Padstow and via Southampton to Bournemouth and Weymouth. It also had many routes connecting towns in...

 on 29 November 1841. It served the towns of Fareham

Fareham

The market town of Fareham lies in the south east of Hampshire, England, between the cities of Southampton and Portsmouth, roughly in the centre of the South Hampshire conurbation.It gives its name to the borough comprising the town and the surrounding area...

 and Gosport

Gosport

Gosport is a town, district and borough situated on the south coast of England, within the county of Hampshire. It has approximately 80,000 permanent residents with a further 5,000-10,000 during the summer months...

 with one intermediate station at Fort Brockhurst

Fort Brockhurst

Fort Brockhurst is one of the Palmerston Forts, in Gosport, England. It is now an English Heritage property.Fort Brockhurst was designed by William Crossman in the 19th century to protect Portsmouth...

.

History

The original branch was extended by 600 yards (548.6 m) in September 1845 from the terminus in Gosport to a station in the Royal Clarence Yard at a cost of £8000 for the use of Queen Victoria when visiting the Isle of Wight.

The Priddy's Hard, Frater and Bedenham Railway was laid in 1912, leaving the Fareham to Gosport line north of Fort Brockhurst and serving the Bedenham Depot and Priddy's Hard Royal Naval Armaments Depot.

The northern section of the line remained open to serve the Royal Naval Armaments Depot

Royal Naval Armaments Depot

A Royal Naval Armament Depot was a group of armament depots dedicated to supplying the needs of the Royal Navy as well as the Royal Air Force, British Army and foreign/commonwealth governments; they were sister depots of Royal Naval Cordite Factories, Royal Naval Torpedo and Royal Naval Mine Depots...

 at Bedenham until the 1990s. A section of the line between Fort Brockhurst and Gosport has been converted into a cycleway.In 2010 work started in construction of a concrete busway along the trackbed between Fareham and Fort Brockhurst.