Lancashire Live, 24th February
A campaign group wanting government and rail industry support to reopen a railway between Colne and Skipton, enabling fast trains between Lancashire and Yorkshire, holds its annual general meeting in Colne next month with a Network Rail director speaking about other reopened lines.
The Skipton-East Lancashire Rail Action Partnership (SELRAP) has invited Mike Smith of Network Rail's Restoring Your Railway programme to talk about reopened lines in Dartmoor and Northumberland. SELRAP is also due for talks with a government transport minister, it has announced.
The Northumberland Line is a reopened route north of Newcastle upon Tyne with seven new stations. It reopened in December 2024 and had 50,000 passenger journeys in the first month, according to Northumberland County Council. The Dartmoor Line was reopened in 2021 and took just nine months of rail line work, according to reports.
Last autumn, SELRAP said talks after the 2024 general election had raised hopes about reinstating the 12-mile link between Yorkshire and Lancashire, which was closed in the 1970s.
Today, much of the remaining line on the Lancashire side serving Colne, Nelson and Brierfield is just a single track with limited trains west towards Blackburn and Preston. The line ends at Colne. However, most of the old track bed remains to Skipton.
Campaigners want a new railway station built in Earby, near Barnoldswick, and expanded fast train services including for Blackpool, Preston, Liverpool, Keighley, Bradford, Leeds and Hull, through a reopened Colne-Skipton section. They say poorer east Lancashire areas, such as Pendle, Burnley and Hyndburn, suffer economically because of restricted transport connections.
Energy firm Drax, which has a power station near Selby and other renewable projects, backs the campaign for freight train needs. East Lancashire Chamber of Commerce and Skipton Building Society also back it.
Also last year, retired Rail magazine journalist Steve Broadbent told a SELRAP meeting that the Colne to Skipton link could be 'third in the queue' for government support during this new parliament. He said the government 'could get a lot of good news by running a rail line through deprived areas for not much money.'
He also said rail engineering work and pressures to minimise shut-downs along the Manchester, Huddersfield and Leeds rail corridor could strengthen the case for reopening the more-northerly Colne to Skipton link.
Speaking this week, SELRAP member and media officer Jane Wood, of Barnoldswick, said: "As part of the meeting. we will be updating our members and invited guests about the campaign's progress. We are pleased that Robbie Moore, MP for Keighley and Ilkley, recently asked the new government Transport Minister Heidi Alexander for a meeting about SELRAP and she has agreed to this. "
Recently, the government announced its support for a new rail line between Oxford and Cambridge and a third runway at Heathrow Airport. But some observers have asked about what the north might get?
In Lancashire, another campaign for a railway line focuses on Skelmersdale, described as the largest town in England without a rail link. Elsewhere, Morecambe, Lancaster and Heysham have been the focus of railway investment debate to cater for the Eden Project development. And Rossendale, also without a mainstream railway, has aspirations for new connections to Greater Manchester.