Keighley and Worth Valley Railway

Keighley and Worth Valley Railway
Railway station in Haworth (seat of the railway administration)
Route length:	8 kilometers
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Maximum slope :	17.9  ‰
Minimum radius :	109 m
Legend by Skipton Originally Keighley Station Keighley to Leeds from Keighley freight yard to Queensbury Ingrow Ingrow tunnel (137.16 m) River Worth Damems Alternative point Oakworth Mytholmes Tunnel (68.58 m) Haworth from Haworth freight yard Alternative point Oxenhope

The Keighley and Worth Valley Railway (KWVR) is an 8 km (5 mile) branch line in West Yorkshire , England . It served the factories and towns in the Worth Valley and is now a museum railway . The line runs from Keighley to the terminus in Oxenhope . At Keighley it is connected to the British railways network.

history

Beginnings and construction of the route

The civil engineer John McLandsborough criticized the lack of a railway connection to Haworth in 1861 when he visited the place in memory of the writer Charlotte Brontë . His proposal to build a railroad from Keighley Station to Oxenhope was welcomed by factory owners and other influential figures locally, as well as by the Midland Railway , which owned the line through Keighley. With 15 factories near the terminus as well as others along the way, the prospect of buoyant traffic was good.

At a meeting of the aforementioned personalities, the construction cost was estimated at £ 30,000. Therefore, 3,134 shares of £ 10 each were issued on that occasion, and directors, bankers, lawyers and engineers were selected. J. McLandsborough, from whom the proposal for the construction of the line came and who had mainly gained experience in hydraulic engineering and sewer construction, but also in the construction of the Otley and Ilkley Railway , was appointed managing engineer, JS Crossley of the Midland Railway became more advisory Engineer.

The track was licensed by Act of Parliament in 1862, and the first sod did Isaac Holden as chairman of the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway on Shrove Tuesday , February 9th. 1864

The line was built on a single track, but with a subgrade that was wide enough to accommodate a second track if necessary. The construction time was estimated at one year, but there were delays in the acquisition of the land, a cow ate some planning documents at Oakworth , and it came while drilling the tunnel at the south end of Ingrow West station ( 53 ° 51 ′  N , 1 ° 55 ′  W ) sand slides from the tunnel walls, which made it necessary to drive piles down to the bedrock for stabilization. The ensuing tremors and ground movements caused damage to the Methodist Church at Wesley Place and the KWVR had to pay £ 1,980 in compensation.

The track construction had started from both ends of the line and was finished in 1866. A locomotive from Ilkley was used for the test drive , which took almost two hours to travel from Keighley to Oxenhope and only 13 minutes to return. Before it opened, the line was hit by severe storms in November 1866.

The route was officially opened on April 13, 1867. The opening train, however, remained on the incline at Keighley and again between Oakworth and Haworth and had to be divided to continue the journey. Public transport began on April 15, 1867.

business

The line was operated by the Midland Railway , which owned most of the rail network in the area, and was eventually bought out by them, in part due to competing interests on the part of the Great Northern Railway . The sale brought the previous owners a profit, which was unusual for a line of this type; however, the Midland Railway tried to prevent the Great Northern Railway from entering their area. In 1923 the line became part of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway under the Railways Act 1921 , and in 1948 it became the property of British Railways (BR) on the occasion of nationalization .

As a condition of the takeover by the Midland Railway, a diversion was built, the necessity of which arose from the fact that the local population did not consider the wooden scaffolding pier bridge over a mill pond to be safe. According to tradition, many passengers to Haworth got off at Oakworth and continued on foot to avoid crossing the bridge. Initially, it was planned to bypass the pond on its bank and to return to the original stretch through an incision. During construction, however, the ground in the cut turned out to be unstable, so that the construction of the short Mytholmes tunnel ( 53 ° 50 ′ 14.3 ″  N , 1 ° 56 ′ 49.9 ″  W ) was necessary. A picture showing the old truss bridge hangs in the ticket hall of Oakworth Station.

closure

British Railways ceased operations on the route in 1962. The last scheduled passenger train ran on December 31, 1961.

Reopening and museum operation

Locomotive Taff Vale 85 at the Damems signal box, which was built due to the additional traffic when shooting the film The Railway Children .

A museum railway association bought the line from BR and opened the museum in 1968, which is carried out in the style of the 1950s. The KWVR has become a major tourist attraction. It is run by more than 500 volunteers and 10 paid employees and carries more than 110,000 passengers a year.

The KWVR is currently (2015) one of only two museum railways in the UK to operate a complete branch line in its original manner. The other is the Ecclesbourne Valley Railway in Wirksworth , Derbyshire .

On July 10, 2008, the Duke of Kent visited the line on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of its reopening. He traveled in a special train from the tank locomotive 41241 of class 2MT the LMS and the lounge car The Old Gentleman's Saloon , which in the film The Railway Children was used and formerly the director of the North Eastern Railway served. During his visit, the Duke not only rode in the saloon car, but also on the locomotive.

Operating points

Keighley

Platform 4 in Keighley (2008)

• Location: 53 ° 52 ′  N , 1 ° 54 ′  W
• Connections to Leeds , Bradford , Skipton , Carlisle , Lancaster , Morecambe and London King's Cross
• Souvenir shop and buffet
• turntable
• Picnic area
• Restored according to the appearance in the 1950s with a cast iron platform roof on platform 4, as it used to be on all platforms of the station.

Ingrow (West)

Station building Ingrow West (2009)

• Location: 53 ° 51 ′  N , 1 ° 55 ′  W
• Access to the Museum of Rail Travel of the Vintage Carriages Trust
• Shop for railway enthusiasts
• Access to the Bahamas Locomotive Society's Ingrow Loco Museum
• parking spot

Damems

Damems railway station (2005)

• Location: 53 ° 51 ′  N , 1 ° 55 ′  W
• Smallest station on a standard gauge line in Great Britain with a waiting room , ticket office , signal box (marshals) and level crossing
• Gas lighting and coal stoves
• In the BBC series Born and Bred as Ormston shown

Oakworth

Oakworth Train Station (2003)

• Location: 53 ° 50 ′  N , 1 ° 57 ′  W
• The 1970 film location of The Railway Children starring Jenny Agutter , Dinah Sheridan , Bernard Cribbins , Sally Thomsett and Gary Warren
• Restored in the Edwardian style with gas lighting
• Four coal stoves (in use around 8 months a year)
• Depot for construction trains (not open to the public)
• Parking lot (signposted for Horseless Carriages , ie "carriage without horses")

Haworth

Engine shed in Haworth (2007)

• Location: 53 ° 50 ′  N , 1 ° 57 ′  W
• Shop for railway enthusiasts
• The depot and the railway maintenance office are based here (not open to the public, guided tours on individual days)
• Picnic area, view of the engine shed
• Access to the village and the Brontë family rectory
• Gas lighting on the platform
• Restored in the style of a country train station from the 1950s

Oxenhope

Platform in Oxenhope, terminus of the KWVR (2006)

• Location: 53 ° 49 ′  N , 1 ° 57 ′  W
• Terminus, about 660 feet (200 m) above sea level. M.
• Exhibition engine shed, rebuilt with funds from the Heritage Lottery Fund ; is home to locomotives and wagons that are not currently in use and documents their history and that of the line.
• Railway service vehicle plant (not open to the public)
• Buffet (converted from the BR type Mk1 RMB passenger car No. 1824) and a shop for railway enthusiasts.
• parking spot
• Bus connection to Hebden Bridge
• Gas lighting on the platform and parking lot as well as in the waiting room

Use in local transport

Residents of Oxenhope, Haworth, Oakworth and Ingrow use the diesel-powered early train to Keighley on weekends, especially Sunday mornings, and one of the steam trains for the return journey. On weekdays outside the summer months they use the local bus service instead.

As a privately operated museum railway, the route does not specifically serve local traffic; a 2009 study by Ove Arup & Partners on behalf of West Yorkshire Metro examined the feasibility of a daily shuttle service between Oxenhope and Keighley. Following the publication of the first part of the study, West Yorkshire Metro raised concerns about the funding and availability of rolling stock, making it questionable in the short to medium term.

A recent study on behalf of the Worth Valley Joint Transport Committee found that it would be possible to run up to four commuter trains in the morning and evening.

Rolling material

The KWVR owns a large collection of steam and diesel locomotives , passenger cars and other rolling stock , including one of the four surviving rail buses from Waggon- und Maschinenbau GmbH Donauwörth (of originally five) with the number E79964. Some of the numerous historical passenger cars that have been collected over time are used in travel on selected open days.

The railway has three rail cranes: a 10-tonne steam crane from Grafton and a 15-tonne diesel crane from Hubbard for track construction and a 45-tonne steam crane from LMS for use in the event of an accident. In addition, the sister company Bahamas Locomotive Society owns a steam crane for the emergency service, which is stationed in Ingrow. A number of wagons for construction train service are mainly stationed at Oakworth and Ingrow West.

In film and television

The route and its stations have been seen in several film and television productions.

Shortly before the reopening as a museum railway, ITV shot a commercial for chocolate biscuits on the route near Mytholmes Tunnel in the 1960s with Ronnie Corbett , who was holding onto the handrail of the Pug 51218 locomotive .

Scenes from the 1970 film The Railway Children were filmed on the KWVR. The route lined up for this purpose as one of the few museum railways in the UK at the time and the only one of them to have a tunnel that would be one of the main locations for the film. Since the tunnel is actually much shorter than it appears in the film, it was temporarily extended with scenery material. Among others were the locomotives Hudswell Clarke 0-6-0T No. 31 Hamburg , GWR 0-6-0PT No. 5775, Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway 0-6-0 No. 957 and GNR N2 0-6-2T No. 1744 to see. One of the filming locations on the railway line was Mytholme's Tunnel near Haworth . The scavenger hunt was filmed at Mytholmes as well, as was the scene in which the children wave the girls' red petticoats to warn an approaching train of a landslide . The landslide scene itself was filmed in a notch on the Oakworth side of the Mytholmes tunnel, and the high grass meadows from which the children waved to the trains were on the Haworther side of the tunnel.

1976 KWVR and Haworth Station was in the first episode of the sitcom Yanks Go Home from Granada TV to see who plays 1,942th A group of US Army Air Force Airmen arrives by train to be stationed in a fictional small town in Lancashire, northwestern England.

In 1979, an episode of UK TV's sitcom series Last of the Summer Wine was filmed in part along the Worth Valley railroad. Three of the main characters , Compo, Foggy and Clegg, release the brakes on a train and try to bring it to a stop again, driving back and forth along the route. The GWR locomotive No. 5775 painted by London Transport with the number L89 was used.

The KWVR also served to filming for the BBC - Drama Series Peaky Blinders of 2013, a gang of Birmingham shortly after the First World War .

In 2014, the station scenes in the feature film Testament of Youth in Keighley and the interior shots in the trains were filmed in some of the historic KWVR passenger cars.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Branch Profile. KWVR - Keighley & Worth Valley Railway . Retrieved September 11, 2015.
2. ^ ^{A b c d} Ralph Oliver Thomas Povey: The History of the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway . Keighley and Worth Valley Railway Preservation Society, 1970, ISBN 0902438093 .
3. ↑ St. James's Palace . In: Court Circular , July 10, 2008. 
4. ^ Full steam ahead on the royal railway! , The Telegraph and Argus. July 10, 2008. Retrieved September 13, 2015. 
5. ↑ Commuter trains earmarked for the Worth Valley? . In: Rail Magazine . No. 618, May 20, 2009.
6. ↑ Commuter service plan hits buffers . In: Bradford Telegraph & Argus , Newsquest Ltd, June. Retrieved September 15, 2015. 
7. ^ Keighley and Worth Valley Railway could carry commuters , BBC. January 21, 2011. Retrieved September 15, 2015. 
8. ↑ The Golden Age of Steam Engines, No. 2 - Branching Out , BBC Four , first broadcast December 17, 2012, time 27:30 min.
9. ^ Screen online: Railway Children, The (1970) . In: screenonline . British Film Institute . Retrieved September 15, 2015.
10. ^ Miran Rahman: Filming starts at Keighley & Worth Valley Railway . Keighley News. Retrieved September 15, 2015.

Web links

Commons : Keighley and Worth Valley Railway  - Collection of Images, Videos, and Audio Files

• Keighley and Worth Valley Railway
• Ingrow Museum of Rail Travel - Vintage Carriages Trust
• Ingrow Loco Museum - Bahamas Locomotive Society
• British Railways in 1960 - Keighley to Oxenhope ( Memento of July 28, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
• Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway Trust