Some news announced today on a possible partial return to passenger
operation.
For the time being Fawley is being regarded as a destination too far with
costs to bring the line
up to passenger standard not viable so the intention is just to return
passenger service as far as Hythe where a one platform station will be
built on land adjacent to an existing council car park.

Estimate is about 3years to achieve this.
That seems quite long to me considering Okehampton was announced in
March2021 and opened in November 2021 though NR had started vegetation
removal and survey work for a few months before
the announcement.

Like Okehampton the Fawley line is still in existence and was used for
freight traffic to the refinery until recently and still sees some military
traffic to Marchwood Port. That has also seen a little commercial traffic
recently since much of it was sold to the partners in the Solent Gateway
project who intend developing more civilian traffic some of which they hope
can utilise the Railway.

<https://www.solentgateway.com/about-solent-gateway/>

Link to BBC news item on the reopening proposal.

<https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-60861885>

Whatever happens it looks like one of the last sets of manual gates and
locally operated semaphore
signals on National Rail in the South of England will soon be removed.

These can be seen on this web article on the Branch
<http://www.cornwallrailwaysociety.org.uk/fawley-branch.html>

The line itself as Railways go isn’t that old being opened in 1925.

GH