Tag: Mytholmroyd

Calder Valley Connections

Mytholmroyd (in picture) and Sowerby Bridge should be getting all York-Blackpool trains stopping when the May 2018 timetable plan is implemented (which may not be May 2018!). Worryingly, however, both stations were threatened in the draft timetable with losing Sunday services to/from Manchester as well as late night trains back in the week—unintended consequences of the service specification in the franchise agreement. We are more hopeful Sowerby Bridge will see improvement by December 2019 when the “Northern Connect” regional express brand is launched. Sowerby Bridge is to be an NC-designated station, and we are told all NC trains should stop there even though this would go beyond the franchise specification. We’ve asked Northern to clarify their intentions and we’ll let you know!

Northern Connect stations will also get “full staffing”, which is starting to sound something like a proper booking office. Mytholmroyd and Brighouse are meant to get for partial staffing, the meaning of which will doubtless become clear. When its big new car park is complete Northern may discover that Mytholmroyd needs more trains! Brighouse certainly deserves better.

 

More Awards for Station Groups

In the Bronte Garden, one of numerous excellent information boards celebrates “Gardening at Sowerby Bridge Station”. Another board commemorates Branwell Bronte who worked at the first Sowerby Bridge station, and in front of it an traditional wooden seat has been sponsored by ACORP, the Association of Community Rail Partnerships.

Floral displays, local history displays, artwork from schools, edible plants free to harvest at Todmorden… all products of community involvement make railway stations on our line more welcoming and hence train travel more attractive.

Seven years in a row have FoSBRS, the Friends of Sowerby Bridge Railway Station, scooped awards from Yorkshire in Bloom under the Britain in Bloom banner supported by the Royal Horticultural Society. This year the achievements of friends or partnership groups at no less than three stations in our immediate area have been recognised with awards, with accolades also from ACORP.

This year ACORP’s Community Rail Awards were presented in Southport on 29 September. Sowerby Bridge’s “Station 175” event, held over a weekend in October last year,  received an acclaimed joint third place in the competition for best community engagement event. Station 175 set out to draw in local people, to inform and educate about the impact of the railway on the town. It spotlighted  developments at the station since 1840 including recent projects of FOSBRS. The “175” weekend brought together all age-groups, involved local businesses, received a grant from Calderdale Council and was supported by Northern Rail and Trans Pennine Express. A year on, FoSBRS look to be going from strength to strength.

The Community Rail Awards presentation was the Sowerby Bridge Friends’ second award-collecting outing in a month. FOSBRS had already been decorated by Yorkshire in Bloom with not only a Gold (2 marks short of Platinum) in the Yorkshire Rose Open Spaces 2016 category but also a discretionary tourism award. Plaques in the station subway bear witness to success in this competition every year since 2010.

The Friends of Brighouse Station — dare we call them FOBS? — haven’t been going quite as long as their colleagues at Sowerby Bridge, but scored fantastic early success last year with rewards for spectacular floral colour. This year they are among the winners again, and expressed delight at receiving no less than three awards. Building on success as a new group in 2015, FOBS entered the In Your Neighbourhood section at Yorkshire in Bloom this year, and received not only the highest award Outstanding, but also — and this was a delightful surprise at the awards ceremony in York — a judges’ discretionary award for a small community.

Not to be outdone by Sowerby Bridge, the Brighouse group also went in for the Community Rail (ACORP) awards, and at the Southport event were assessed at the highest level — Gold — for the It’s Your Station competition. Regeneration of  an overgrown “eyesore” patch to what will become an attractive part of the station garden was recognised with third place in the  Small Projects competition.

For indeed why should stations not be gardens?

The Brighouse station friends are chaired by David Bedding, who reminded us that the group only started less than two years ago and said the awards “reflect the tremendous work put in by the whole group,” turning “drab and unloved” Brighouse station into “the clean, vibrant and colourful place it is now.”

Mytholmroyd Station Partnership also saw success again this year with a Yorkshire in Bloom Level 5 Outstanding in the It’s Your Neighbourhood category. At the heart of a community still rebuilding after the Boxing Day flood, the group also received a discretionary community award for dealing with adversity. The Mytholmroyd group recently celebrated its tenth anniversary, and in what sounds to us like a first held, a “twinning” ceremony with the Friends of Bentham Station on the line between Skipton and Lancaster. The hope is that others will be encouraged to form adoption groups for local stations.

Mytholmroyd station is shortly to get a new car park, major investment funded through West Yorkshire Combined Authority from the West Yorkshire Plus Transport Fund. The adoption groups can never replace this kind of investment by the rail businesses and transport agencies, but what the “Friends” and “Partnerships” can do is provide little extras — artwork, culture, horticulture or whatever — that make a big difference.