Calder Valley Line

Calder Valley line
A Northern Rail Class 158 at Castleton East Junction
Overview
Type	Heavy Rail
Locale	West Yorkshire Greater Manchester Lancashire Leeds North West England Yorkshire and the Humber
Termini	York railway station Selby railway station Leeds railway station Manchester Victoria station Blackpool North railway station
Operation
Owner	Network Rail
Operator(s)	Northern TransPennine Express Grand Central
Character	Heavy Rail
Technical
Number of tracks	2
Track gauge	4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge

The Calder Valley line (also previously known as the Caldervale line) is a railway route in Northern England between the cities of Leeds and Manchester as well as the seaside resort of Blackpool. It is the slower of the two main rail routes between Leeds and Manchester (the other being the Huddersfield line), and the northernmost of the three main trans-Pennine routes.

Passenger train services are operated by Northern and run on the following pattern:

This line, along with the Huddersfield line and York and Selby lines, is normally merged in national timetables to show a coast-to-coast service. Services within West Yorkshire are sponsored by West Yorkshire Metro, whose tickets (including Metrocards) can be used up to Hebden Bridge between Leeds and Blackpool, and Walsden between Leeds and Manchester.

Before the 1923 Grouping the first section of the line (Leeds–Bradford) was owned by the Great Northern Railway (GNR); and the entire remainder by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway (L&YR), apart from the final section of the branch leading into Huddersfield, which was owned by the London and North Western Railway (LNWR).

For the section between Halifax and Burnley the line uses the valley of the River Calder, which in fact comprises two separate valleys with rivers of the same name, that of West Yorkshire and the Lancashire River Calder thus giving the services their name; it also follows the Rochdale Canal from Todmorden into Manchester. Since the route crosses the Pennines, there are many tunnels to negotiate en route.