Haworth Yard Keighley & Worth Valley Railway Std 80002 & Ivatt 41241

The Keighley and Worth Valley Railway is a 5-mile-long (8 km) branch line that served mills and villages in the Worth Valley and is now a heritage railway line in West Yorkshire, England. It runs from Keighley to Oxenhope. It connects to the national rail network at Keighley railway station.

 

 

 

In 1861, a Civil Engineer named John McLandsborough visited Haworth to pay tribute to Charlotte Brontë and was surprised to find that Haworth was not served by a railway. He decided that this should be changed and put forward a proposal for a branch running from the station at Keighley to Oxenhope, which was warmly received by a number of mill owners and other influential people in the area as well as the Midland Railway, the owners of the railway through Keighley. The branch served 15 mills around its terminus as well as others on the line, so it was perceived as being unlikely to fail due to lack of traffic.

 

It was reported to the meeting of these local gentlemen that the line would cost £30,000 to build. In light of this fact, 3,134 shares worth £10 each were issued at this meeting, along with the election of directors, bankers, solicitors and engineers. Notable was the fact that J McLandsborough, the original proposer of the line (who dealt predominantly with water and sewerage engineering, but had experience of building the Otley and Ilkley Railway) was appointed acting engineer; whilst J. S. Crossley of the Midland Railway was appointed consultant engineer.

 

The railway was incorporated by an Act of Parliament in 1862 and the first sod was cut on Shrove Tuesday, 9 February 1864 by Isaac Holden, the chairman of the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway.
The railway was built as single track, but with a trackbed wide enough to allow upgrading to double track if the need arose and the work was estimated to take approximately one year to complete. However, there were some delays: the time taken for the contractors to get possession of the land which the railways were to be built on; a cow eating the plans of the line somewhere near Oakworth; and, complications in digging the tunnel at the direct south end of Ingrow West. This manifested itself in that the tunnel walls, when bored, were oozing quicksand resulting in the application of piles being driven down to the bedrock to support and stabilise the tunnel. Unfortunately, this meant that the Wesley Place Methodist Church was damaged through the vibration and movement of the earth. The KWVR had to pay £1,980 in damages to the church.

 

The rails were completed in 1866, tracklaying having started at each end and now being joined in the middle. The line was tested with a locomotive from Ilkley, which took nearly 2 hours to get from Keighley to Oxenhope, but just 13 minutes to get back. Unfortunately, before opening, violent storms struck the line in November of that year.
The opening ceremony was held on Saturday 13 April 1867. Unfortunately, the train got stuck on Keighley bank and again between Oakworth and Haworth, necessitating splitting of the train before carrying on with the journey. Finally, on 15 April 1867, public passenger services on the Worth Valley commenced.

 

 

The line was operated by the Midland Railway, who owned most of the rail network in the area, and was eventually bought by the Midland in part due to interest from the rival railway company, the Great Northern. Upon sale of the railway, the mill owners made a profit which was unusual for many lines of that type, as (for strategic reasons) the Midland wanted to prevent the GN from taking over its territory. After becoming part of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway in 1923 during Grouping, ownership passed to British Railways (BR) following nationalisation in 1948.

 

The deviation was built as a condition of the buy out of the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway by the Midland Railway. The need for the deviation was to avoid a large wooden trestle viaduct that crossed a mill pond, as the locals believed the viaduct was unsafe, and supposedly many alighted at Oakworth and continued on foot to Haworth to avoid crossing the viaduct. The original design for the deviation was to skirt the mill pond then through a cutting to rejoin the original formation. However, during construction the material in the cutting proved to be unstable, resulting in the construction of the short Mytholmes Tunnel. The original trestle viaduct can be seen in a picture hanging in the booking hall of Oakworth station.

 

British Railways closed the line in 1962 and their last scheduled passenger train ran on 31 December 1961. A preservation society was formed which bought the line from BR and reopened it in 1968 as a heritage railway. The line is now a major tourist attraction operated entirely by volunteers and carries more than 110,000 passengers a year. The KWVR is currently one of only two preserved railways which operates a complete branch line in its original form, the other being the heritage Ecclesbourne Valley Railway in Wirksworth, Derbyshire.

 

On 10 July 2008, the Duke of Kent visited the railway following the 40th anniversary of its reopening. While at the railway, the Duke travelled on a specially prepared "Royal Train", consisting of tank locomotive 41241, an LMS Class 2MT, pulling a single carriage, The Old Gentleman's Saloon, as featured in The Railway Children, which is a former North Eastern Railway directors Saloon. While visiting, the Duke travelled in the carriage and on the locomotive footplate.

 

 

My thanks to Wikipedia for the above notes