Category: Newsletter

Adopters in Celebratory Mood!

Massively successful Friends of Brighouse Station (FoBS) gathered on silver jubilee day, 28 May 2025 to do a morning’s work on the station before a celebratory lunch at the pub nearby. The group focuses on looking after the station – not doing things the railway should be doing but providing floral displays, high-quality posters and a wildlife garden. Local businesses provide sponsorship.

And campaigning, is for others, we were firmly told! Station adoption groups make the railway a more attractive place better for all who travel by train.

Hadrag, formed in 1985, campaigned over 15 years with other groups like West Yorkshire Transport 2000 for Brighouse reopening. The late James Towler, who chaired the regional rail users’ consultative committee, also chaired our public meetings in Brighouse.

Work has started on changes to Brighouse station where more space is needed for rail-replacement buses as diversions gather pace on the TransPennine route upgrade. A small number – about three we heard – will be lost to create a better, more convenient area for people to wait and board rail replacement buses. We guess there’ll be some inconvenience over the summer whilst the work is being done including remarking of car park. Also promised are more space to wait for trains on platform 2 (westbound) using available space for widening; platform zoning markings; painting of access ramps.

And there is to be a toilet pod on platform 1 (eastbound). So expect digging to create drains. We gather the facility will be permanent!

Patience needed!

Here’s the shot from 2022, last time we met in Brighouse. TransPennine Express wasn’t stopping, but now, whenever route upgrade works close the Huddersfield line, they do! So you can, at a TPE price, and when the engineers deem it, get from Brighouse on a train through to Newcastle, York, Liverpool or Manchester Airport. Buses provide a replacement link for Huddersfield, which will happen more when big work starts remodelling the centre-piece of the Pennine upgrade with four tracks to Dewsbury. Sometimes Brighouse does less well. When the Dewsbury route is blocked our Northern “valley bottom” trains Manchester-Brighouse-Leeds trains go via Halifax and Bradford; Brighouse gets a bus link. (Northern crews from the North West, we understand, do not know the route via Wakefield.)

Brighouse had been top-performing Calder Valley station on percentage footfall growth. So we just can’t wait for things to get back to normal – with potentially more trains. Had Elland been open that could have been the interchange for replacement buses. We still need to be patient on that one – but soon, we hope.

Note view at back. Station Café on Gooder Lane. And now there’s a new one, The Shrub just across Huddersfield Road, as well as the Commercial Inn on the corner.

Brighouse 25, Hadrag 40, Northern Sparks 10 – forget “Rail 200”, we have anniversaries of our own.

40 years since we founded Hadrag. 25 years since we got Brighouse station opened. And 10 years since the Northern Sparks task force report by regional politicians and officials gave top priority to full Calder Valley line electrification – part of a programme that was to span the North. Transformation would be complete – just about all lines to be decarbonised by what is still the most energy efficient, and long-run cost-effective way of running a zero-carbon railway. Government ignored the recommendations. We founded the Electric Railway Charter to press for action. Calder Valley electrification is a clear objective of West Yorkshire Combined Authority and Calderdale Council, and we’ve had a good response from the new local MPs. Recently Calder Valley electrification got a mention in Lord Blunkett’s Yorkshire rail report – with a wait measured in decades. We are not holding our breath for the imminent spending review. Batteries are not good enough in the long run but will be part of the transition. Meanwhile dirty diesels continue to trundle noisily along our tracks.

We are delighted that our friend David Hoggarth, strategic rail director at Transport for the North has accepted our invitation to be guest speaker at our 2025 annual meeting.

All train users – actual and would be – will be welcome on the morning of Saturday 28 June in the conference suite at St John’s (community hall), Rastrick, HD6 1HN, 5 minutes’ walk from Brighouse station. Doors open just after 09.30 for 09.50 start. All done before 12.30, so time to enjoy Brighouse gala afterwards! More on back page. We hope to provide refreshments – and maybe a cake to cut!

Tale of three stations (going on four) and wider view along line

Hadrag may have Halifax in its name, but we have a wider view along the Calder Valley line. Last year our AGM was in Sowerby Bridge. This year we are very close to our silver anniversary station – 25 years since Brighouse opened. Hadrag was founded in 1985 – but one or two of us had already started campaigning not just for station reopening but for a better service all round. So too had other local and regional groups. This writer had a letter in Modern Railways magazine (1983 we think) calling for Brighouse reopening. The line had closed to regular passenger trains in 1970, but those trains were barely a service, intermittent on Bradford-Huddersfield and Sowerby Bridge to York routes – not serving West Yorkshire’s commercial capital, Leeds. (Even if the political capital Wakefield was served.)

So the service that started on Sunday 28 May 2000 service was a great boost: weekdays hourly Huddersfield-Bradford-Leeds, with a morning commuter train from Hebden Bridge to Leeds via Dewsbury returning at teatime. Eight years later the Leeds via Dewsbury trains became hourly and extended in the other direction to Rochdale, Manchester and Southport (now just Wigan). That was the moment of growth, beating other CV stations over a 10-year period, percentage-wise.

Grand Central trains to London started in 2010, now times a day with ambitions to increase.

So although Brighouse has (on Mon-Sat) two local trains an hour on weekdays these are spread over two routes so the practical service is only hourly. Compare that with Hebden Bridge or Todmorden. Brighouse has a similar or bigger catchment population, but a much worse service. So Hadrag says:

  • The direct hourly trains Manchester-Brighouse-Dewsbury-Leeds should run seven days a week…
  • …and on Mondays-Saturdays these direct Leeds trains should be twice hourly, one of them fast Brighouse-Leeds, target journey time 20 minutes. And we think one of these could come from Preston or Blackpool via Blackburn doubling the popular “Roses Rail Link” that runs Blackpool-York via Halifax and Bradford.
  • The hourly Halifax-Huddersfield route would also be more attractive if it ran more frequently, an alternative to slow local buses.
  • An attractive new service could be Bradford to Sheffield via Halifax, Brighouse, Barnsley and Meadowhall. A short “mothballed” curve near Horbury-Crigglestone would need to reopen. Brighouse-Sheffield could be about 55 minutes, Elland-Sheffield just short of an hour – very attractive indeed.

We realise of course that much of the above is unlikely to be achieved until the TransPennine Route Upgrade is complete, at least the Huddersfield-Dewsbury-Leeds bit. But we also know increased frequency Brighouse-Dewsbury-Leeds is a West Yorkshire Combined Authority desire, and Bradford-Sheffield via Brighouse gets a mention as a possible aspiration.

Onward up the line

The “main” Calder Valley line runs west from Brighouse. The “Hebble incline” goes up to Halifax at Greetland Junction. Going straight on at Greetland, next stop is Sowerby Bridge. We have for years called for more trains to serve what used to be a key junction station. We knew that West Yorkshire Combined Authority supported the idea of more trains calling and that has been reaffirmed in a recent letter from WYCA rail officer Mick Sasse, representing the views of Mayor Tracy Brabin and transport committee chair Cllr Susan Hinchcliffe. We have had a similar response from David Hoggarth strategic rail director at Transport for the North.

Hadrag argues on the basis of population that all trains that stop at Hebden Bridge should also serve Sowerby Bridge. Sowerby Bridge serves a community as big as Hebden and Todmorden combined, two council wards plus. Think about the Ryburn valley and the south western quarter of Halifax that feeds Sowerby Bridge’s catchment. Yet the impression you might get turning up at the station is that most trains rush through without stopping, which is true for up to half of them. One train an hour to Halifax and Bradford, two an hour to Leeds and Manchester. Through the week, only a few evening-peak York-Blackpool trains stop, though all of them call on Sundays.

So Hadrag’s first priority is to get all of the York-Blackpools calling, all week. The “Roses Rail Link” had started in 1984¹ – eventually to become hourly semi-fast York-Blackpool. These trains already serve places like Church Fenton, Garforth, and – on the Fylde – Kirkham & Wesham. So we argue Sowerby Bridge should be included.

We met Northern trains officials. We recognise their reluctance to introduce extra stops given pressure to improve timekeeping and reliability on this longish route. But we understand timetable revisions, even recasts, are coming up in the next year or so. So, we say, could this not be an opportunity? We have after had short intervals in the past when the “Roses” trains have served not only Sowerby Bridge but Mytholmroyd as well. As they still do on Sundays.

We also say the semi-fast Leeds-Halifax-Manchesters should serve Sowerby Bridge, to give the same service frequency as Hebden and Tod. TfN and WYCA would not be drawn on which should come first. We think it’s obvious!

¹ So things were starting to happen even before Hadrag invented itself in 1985!

Halifax, nervous of lift…

We need a better service, more southwards and westwards, not to mention the link promised in 2018 to get people across Manchester (and not just for the airport). If we can’t have services once promised round the new Ordsall curve which has one train an hour at best, how about a service via Brighouse and Huddersfield? And more, faster services through upper Calderdale might be a more cost-effective option than a new fantasy line from Bradford to Huddersfield. At our AGM last year civil engineer Colin Elliff advocated a fast route Bradford-Manchester via a tunnel between Halifax and Rochdale, with both towns served. You never know.

Halifax station is a serious concern. Hadrag secretary Peter Stocks and I looked round and are finishing a report. Hadrag’s committee worries about safety aspects from traffic on the approach bridge, to congestion at the platform edge. Could not trains be directed to stop – and passengers advised to wait – at the more spacious south end of the platform – also more under cover? Platform 2 curves the wrong way (can’t be helped!) and is crowded. But drivers can see the signal at the north end from a fair distance round the curve so we reckon trains could stop further back.

Information screens invisible from much of the useful waiting area need to be replicated where they can be seen.

The lift is vital for passengers who are unable to walk, and highly desirable for those supervising families, with heavy luggage, or with ageing or arthritic joints. We have seen it out of service too many times recently. What are people who need it supposed to do? Even the able-bodied feel nervous.

Finally there is the age-old issue of toilets. Well, toilet (singular), as there is only one, and it is not great. Halifax station annually sees getting on for 2 million passengers. It serves the unique, iconic, magnificent Grade I listed Piece Hall. All those passengers deserve better. Northern, we shall be in touch!

… and Elland, coming soon

How much longer do we have to wait? With a TV reporter we met residents who’d moved to Elland back in the 1990s thinking there would be a station in 2000. Elland had passenger numbers predicted as good as Brighouse, maybe better. It was shelved then because of costs and competing projects – look at the latest designs in the present £25M scheme. So now we are what? 26, 27 years late? It will happen.

We shall keep up the campaign for all stations in Calderdale connecting with all points of the compass.

Header Image: Ben Brooksbank, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons