Leeds to Morecambe line
| Leeds–Morecambe line | |
|---|---|
| Overview | |
| Locale |
West Yorkshire Lancashire Lancaster Leeds North West England Yorkshire and the Humber |
| Operation | |
| Owner | Network Rail |
| Operator(s) | Northern |
| Technical | |
| Track gauge | 1,435 mm (4 ft 8 1⁄2 in) standard gauge |
The Leeds–Morecambe line is a railway line running between Leeds, Skipton, Lancaster and Morecambe in northern England. The service is operated by Northern. The route covered by the service was historically part of the Midland Railway. The line is electrified at 25 kV AC overhead between Leeds City and Skipton, a section known as the Airedale line.
The first section, between Leeds City and Shipley was opened by the Leeds and Bradford Railway on 1 July 1846, and extended to Skipton by the Leeds and Bradford Extension Railway.
The line from here, known as the "Little" North Western Railway, opened as far as Clapham on 30 July 1849 and through to Lancaster on 1 June 1850. Here were junctions for the following lines:
The main line continues:
The original main line to Lancaster had the following stations:
Trains now continue via Carnforth, with stations at:
The line has only existed in its current form since January 1966 – prior to this the Leeds to Morecambe service used the 'Little ' North Western Railway route via Lancaster, with the Furness & Midland Joint line to Carnforth served mainly by through carriages detached from/attached to main line trains at Wennington (although a small number of local trains operated between there and Carnforth only).
The Beeching Report of 1963 deemed this service pattern unsatisfactory and proposed that services be 'modified', with the original route from Wennington to Lancaster and Morecambe eventually being closed in favour of the F&MJ line on 3 January 1966. From that date all trains ran Carnforth, the WCML, Hest Bank North Junction and the former LNWR Morecambe branch line to reach their destination. This routing had one major drawback in that travellers could no longer reach Lancaster directly, instead having to change at Carnforth onto Furness line services – a situation that would remain unchanged until the early 1980s. The service was by now operated by DMUs as an extension of the Leeds to Skipton commuter route, with a train every two hours for most of the day (the BR timetable of 1975 had seven trains per day running in each direction on weekdays and three or four on Sundays depending on the time of year). The line was also used by several freight trains each day, including train loads of ammonia from Teesside to the ICI plant at Heysham and bitumen from Stanlow to a distribution plant at Skipton. Steam-hauled charter specials also appeared on the line from time to time from the mid-seventies onwards, running to and from the Steamtown museum at Carnforth.
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