GNR Halifax - Queensbury - Keighley. The Alpine Route. Yorkshires Lost Railway.

A trip along the GNR & LYR line from Halifax to Keighley passing North Bridge, Ovenden, Queensbury, Thornton, Denholme, Walsden, Cullingworth and Ingrow East stations. A very challenging but picturesque route.
A brief History.....

The Queensbury lines was the name given to a number of railway lines in West Yorkshire, England, that linked Bradford, Halifax and Keighley via Queensbury. All the lines were either solely owned by the Great Northern Railway (GNR) or jointly by the GNR and the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway (L&YR). The terrain was extremely challenging for railway construction, and the lines were very expensive to build. The lines were the Halifax and Ovenden Junction Railway, opened from 1874;
the Halifax, Thornton and Keighley Railway from Holmfield to Queensbury and from Thornton to Keighley, opened in stages from 1878.

The lines were marked with a number of major civil engineering works including several viaducts and tunnels. A feature of the line was the unusual station at Queensbury, which was on a triangular track layout, with two platforms on each of the three chords.

In 1880, the GNR applied for Parliamentary sanction to reduce its financial liability for the Thornton to Keighley line on which work was about to begin. It approached the Midland Railway with a proposal to make a joint station at Keighley, to be used by the Midland Railway main line trains, the Worth Valley line trains, and the GNR. The Midland Railway were amenable to this, and the Midland granted the GNR the necessary running powers, and agreed to make a new junction station. The agreement was in exchange for the Midland getting running powers to Halifax. The northernmost part of the Worth Valley branch was relaid and doubled; the agreement marked the start of a more amicable relationship between the GNR and the Midland. Although agreement had been reached about a shared station, goods facilities at Keighley were kept entirely separate: the GNR built a spur line off the Worth Valley route just outside Keighley station; the spur crossed under and entered its own goods yard.

At first the GNR provided the fastest service from Keighley to London in 4 hours 55 minutes by a Keighley–Bradford train, stopping only at St Dunstan's to connect with a King's Cross express. A service from Halifax avoided St Dunstan's by using the Leeds curve to connect with London trains at Laisterdyke. After a brief heyday the routes settled down to concentrate on purely local traffic, and even this diminished when trams started running from both Bradford and Halifax to Queensbury in 1901. Buses caused a further reduction in traffic in the late 1920s and Sunday trains were withdrawn in December 1938, but by 1946 the service was still surprisingly lavish with one through coach working to King's Cross, running from Halifax to Bradford in 22 minutes.

In 1950 the timetable was recast to give a better peak-hour service but with fewer off-peak trains and a reduction in direct trains between Halifax and Keighley. In 1955 the entire passenger service was withdrawn. In May 1956 the sections between Queensbury and Holmfield and between Cullingworth and Ingrow were closed to all traffic. This saved the cost of maintaining Queensbury and Lees Moor Tunnels and divided the route into three separate branch lines which were then operated with reduced signalling. The remaining operation was progressively cut back over the next 18 years. Holmfield and the High Level closed in 1960, Cullingworth in 1963, Thornton and Ingrow in 1965. Halifax to North Bridge coal yard closed in 1974.
There are current plans to reopen the line to walkers and cyclists with an ambitious plan to reopen the Queensbury Tunnel.

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