Why do we need a new railway between Manchester and Leeds via Bradford? - Yorkshire Post Letters

It is time to put a stop to suggestions that there should be a brand new railway between Manchester and Leeds via Bradford. At vast cost, the existing Manchester-Leeds line via Huddersfield is being upgraded and electrified, and some of it restored to quadruple track, which should permit timings between over the 42½ miles between those cities to reduce to 40 minutes.

On the other hand a new line via Bradford, which would be eight miles further, would be little (if any) faster given that trains would call at Rochdale and Bradford en route.

Moreover a major proportion of such a line would have to be in a tunnel. Those who propound it pay little attention to geography or cost, and have limited railway intuition which sadly is a rare commodity.

The valleys that led to its becoming the wool capital of the world, make Bradford difficult to serve by rail.

Moreover if a new line were built, Bradford would then have no fewer than three railway stations when the emphasis over the past 60 years has, where practicable been to reduce city stations to just one – for example Edinburgh, Leeds, Nottingham etc.

If there were to be a new railway across the Pennines, the obvious choice would be the Woodhead route which despite modernisation and electrification plus a brand new three mile tunnel completed as recently as 1954, was then closed in 1981.

Much of the infrastructure remains and this would permit the 42 mile line to almost halve the Manchester-Sheffield time of 55 minutes.

Additionally such a route could be adapted to diverge east of Woodhead and thus serve also Wakefield and Leeds.