Lancashire Telegraph, 21st Februa 2025
A campaign group is again calling for government and rail industry support to reopen a railway between East Lancs and North Yorks Skipton.
Opening the Colne to Skipton route would enable fast trains between Lancashire and Yorkshire.
The Skipton-East Lancashire Rail Action Partnership (SELRAP) holds its annual general meeting in Colne next month with Network Rail director Mike Smith to speak about other reopened lines.
The AGM will take place in Colne Town Hall at 7pm on Monday 10th March.
Mr Smith, part of Network Rail’s Restoring Your Railway programme, will talk about reopened lines in Dartmoor and Northumberland. SELRAP is also due for talks with a government transport minister, it has announced.
Last autumn, SELRAP said talks after the 2024 General Election had raised hopes about reinstating the 12-mile link, closed in the 1970s.
Much of the remaining line serving Colne, Nelson and Brierfield is just a single track with limited trains west towards Blackburn and Preston. The line ends at Colne but most of the old track bed remains to Skipton.
Campaigners want a new railway station built in Earby 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.
Retired Rail magazine journalist Steve Broadbent told a SELRAP meeting the link could be ‘third in the queue’ for government support during this new parliament.
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.
SELRAP media officer Jane Wood said: “As part of the meeting. we will be updating our members and invited guests about the campaign’s progress. We are pleased 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."