The Keighley & Worth Valley Railway: The First 100 Years

The Keighley & Worth Valley Railway: The First 100 Years
Volume 1 : The History of the Railway to 1967

David Pearson

320 pages. 275x215mm. Printed on gloss art paper with colour laminated board covers.

ISBN13 : 9781915069696

£45.00

This is the first of David Pearson’s two-volume history of the first hundred years of the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway. The author is deeply involved with the KWVR and has spent a lifetime researching the railway using primary sources including the K&WVR’s archives. Volume 1 covers the history of the railway and its setting from earliest times, through its conception, financing and promotion, to building and development, concluding with its closure in 1962. Originally built as a private enterprise the five mile long railway was designed to link the mill villages along the Worth Valley with Keighley, eventually being operated by the Midland Railway. Coverage is also given to the Great Northern Railway’s Keighley branch, which had a fundamental impact on the history of the K&WVR. It is hoped that these two volumes, whilst not answering all the questions that the line’s complex history poses, must be as near a definitive version as is likely to be ever produced.

The Keighley & Worth Valley Railway: The First 100 Years - Sample Images

An undated view of Haworth goods yard which is in its original layout, with the access from the Keighley end but apparently nothing to connect it at the Oxenhope end. The goods shed is the original so the date must be pre-1894. There is some development on the Brow, which suggests that the date is probably in the 1880s, the Chapel (yet another, this time a Methodist one, the third or fourth in the village) was built in 1884 and the Sunday School built in 1892. The track in the goods yard appears to be to the original configuration, but the precise arrangements of the connection with the main line, which would give a precise date are not visible. The best we can estimate is between 1884 and 1890. Regardless, it is about as good an image of the area as it was when the railway opened, if the viewer disregards the chapel and buildings to the left of the Brewery above it. Steven Wood

This delightful picture of Oxenhope must be about the turn of the 20th Century as the extension is so clean and new. The two uniformed men are Midland Railway porters but we have no idea who the civilians are. A little more of an angle on the camera would enable us to read the posters and perhaps provide a date, but it’s not to be.