This year sees the 30th Anniversary of the reintroduction of a regular passenger service
on the Ribble Valley Line between Clitheroe and Blackburn with the service running through
to stations to Bolton and Manchester, and more recently Rochdale.

The Ribble Valley line lost its passenger service in September 1962 and became freight-
only. With the running of only block trains and the end of single wagon traffic, by the 1980’s
only two block cement trains per week ran on Tuesdays and Thursdays between Clitheroe
Ribble Cement works and Gunnie yard, Glasgow.

 

The reprieve of and repairs to the Ribblehead viaduct and saving of the Settle-Carlisle route spurred Ribble Valley locals to form a pressure Group (Ribble Valley Rail) in the early 1980s and with the co-operation of the then Regional Railways, BR and the other Rail and Local Authorities, a basic midweek service was reintroduced on a trial basis in May 1994. The service was given a seven-year target to gradually build passenger numbers, but such was its success that the seven year target was reached in the first year!

Since then, steady enhancements have been made – an hourly service, the service
provision lengthened both earlier and later each day, an hourly Sunday service added,
platforms lengthened and longer trains. There is also now much increased freight traffic
with more frequent cement trains heading both north via Hellifield and the S&C, and south
via Blackburn and the West Coast Main line.

 

Bulk limestone from quarries at Horton-in-Ribblesdale and Ribblehead (virtual quarry) will soon have another quarry rail-connected at Horton. Daily log trains travel down from northern sources to the Kronospan factory at Chirk (near Wrexham).

 

Many and various steam and diesel-hauled heritage special trains operate both mid-
week and on Saturdays.

A turn-back bay platform at Rochdale was built specially to allow the service to terminate
there and thus continue on through Manchester to help alleviate the congestion there.

30 years on, Ribble Valley Rail, now the line’s User Group, continues to honour a pledge it
made in 1994, that if the service was reinstated and the four stations of Wilpshire (now
Ramsgreave & Wilpshire), Langho, Whalley and Clitheroe were rebuilt, the volunteers would
help maintain them on a regular basis.

Peter Eastham
Hon. Chairman, Ribble Valley Rail