Starting Point - Brighouse Station. Finish Point - Low Moor Station. Distance 5.5 miles.
Construction of the Baliff Bridge Branch Railway, or Pickle Bridge Line, began in 1874. It provided the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway a more direct route between Bradford and Huddersfield / Mirfield than the routes through Halifax and Cleckheaton. It had two intermediate stations, Clifton Road on the outskirts of Brighouse and Baliff Bridge. More about the line can be read on the Wikipedia article.
Below - The former Clifton Road station. The site of the platforms can be seen at the top of the wall. The station closed to passengers in 1931. The railway used to continue over the road behind me on a viaduct. The track on the left is the former station approach road.
Though the viaduct is gone, the railway trackbed can be joined on the other side of the road and it forms a path through Wellholm Park Woodland. The next major structure on the railway was Thornhills Viaduct which is still intact but is fenced off at both ends, the path goes down to the road beneath and back up to the trackbed at the other side of the road.
Below - Thornhills Viaduct.
For a short stretch north of Thornhills Viaduct the path doesn't follow the railway but run alongside to the west along the edge of a farmers field. The railway was in a cutting at this point but this has now been filled in. The path leads out to a modern housing development but at the end of Fairfield Rise it leads back on to the railway trackbed. Once back on the trackbed a small bridge that once took the railway over Low Lane can be seen.
North of here there was once a station here to serve Baliff Bridge, though this closed in 1917. The station was of wooden construction and burned down in 1929.
Below - Photo of the site of Baliff Bridge station in 1961. (Wikipedia)
The bridge over Birkby Lane in the above photo survives. (Below)
We continue along the railway trackbed until Lower Wyke Lane where housing development in Wyke has seen a small section of trackbed built on.
Below - Bridge abutment at Lower Wyke Lane.
A row of houses on Lower Wyke Lane is built on the site of the railway, however where the road curves sharply to the right a footpath crosses the former railway line to Mayfield Grove and someone has a railway bridge in their garden.
Below - Surviving part of Wyke Viaduct crossing the A58
It was this viaduct that would be the Achilles heel of the line. There were several mines in the area (more about that shortly) and the viaduct suffered from subsidence. Speed restrictions were implemented for a time but passenger services were diverted to other routes in 1948, the intermediate stations on the line had all closed by this stage anyway. The line closed completely in 1952. Wyke Viaduct survived until 1987 but with increasing risk of collapse BR applied to demolish part of the viaduct despite it being listed.
Below - The truncated Wyke Viaduct.
Below - Just beyond the missing bit of viaduct a couple of bridges can be seen, the one on the left crossed a railway to one of the mines that was likely undermining the viaduct. The bridge on the right crossed a farm track.
Just north of here the railway joined the main Calder Valley route between Bradford and Halifax at what was once known as Pickle Bridge Junction, The Pickle Bridge Line being another name by which this line is called. Obviously this is no good for walking and it is a bit of a trek to the next station on that route at Low Moor now that there is no longer a station at Wyke, however there is a handy bit of the mine railway to follow. A footpath runs parallel to the old railway and crosses the Calder Valley line. Continuing on to Station Road (where Wyke Station used to be) on the left hand side we enter Doctor Wood. A path through the wood picks up the mineral railway.
1893 Map (Mineral Railway on the bottom right of the sheet)
The path along the mineral railway leaves the woods and continues up to where the Appleton Academy has recently been built. This seems to be quite an incline and was presumably rope worked at this stage.
From here we head to Wilson Road which takes us to Low Moor Banks, an area that was also covered in coal mines and the railways that connected them. The path to Low Moor station takes us along one side of the triangular junction of the former Cleckheaton Branch line. The former Cleckheaton line is now a footpath and cycle route all the way to Thornhill where it met the line to Horbury Junction near Wakefield.
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