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The Caldervale Line is a railway route in Northern England linking the city of Manchester and the seaside resort of Blackpool in Lancashire with the city of Leeds in Yorkshire via Bradford. The route is the most northern of the three remaining railway lines over the Pennines between Manchester and the Yorkshire region, forms a substantial portion of the first railway line to link Manchester with Leeds (by way of a junction at Normanton with the North Midland Railway ,) and in 1844 formed part of the first through line between the Irish and North Sea coasts.

History
The route today known as the "Caldervale Line" was constructed by several different railway companies that were gradually absorbed into the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway (L&YR,) London & North Western Railway (LNW,) or the Great Northern Railway (GNR.)

Between Manchester & Leeds
Fully opened in 1841, the Manchester & Leeds Railway (M&LR) was the first line to link Manchester with Leeds, and was the first railway to cross the pennines. Consulting Engineer George Stephenson selected a route that followed the Rochdale Canal's course out of Manchester and into the pennine chain, and used the natural contours of the Calder Valley to bring the railway back down from the hills via Mirfield and the present-day Wakefield Kirkgate to Normanton where the railway joined the existing Stephenson-built North Midland Railway. The distance between Manchester and Leeds on this route was roughly 62 miles, and the route did not include Halifax or Bradford directly, despite both being major towns and are on the present-day route.

Halifax got some kind of a service by way of a junction at Greetland (trains from Manchester would have to reverse here to gain access,) and a short spur up to the fringes of the town. Bradford however was not served in any meaningful way; Brighouse was the recognised station for Bradford, being known at opening as "Brighouse and Bradford," despite Bradford being 7 miles (over difficult terrain) to the north, and it was not until the mid-1840's that the route between Sowerby Bridge and Bradford via a more central station in Halifax was opened by the West Riding Union Railway, as a logical extension to link the town of Bradford with Manchester and Lancashire. The West Riding also had Parliamentary powers to build through to Leeds, however by 1851 the West Riding had been absorbed into the L&YR (itself incorporated in 1847 through a merger of several companies including the M&LR,) who obtained permission from Parliament to abandon the scheme.

A new company, the Leeds, Bradford & Halifax Junction Railway, with the backing of the GNR revived the proposal and built a direct link from the northern portal of Bowling Tunnel, sited at the top of a steep incline near Bradford through to Leeds. This meant that trains no longer had to go via Mirfield between Halifax and Leeds, and in 1864 the GNR reached the L&YR's Exchange station (now Bradford Interchange,) by building a steep line down from the Halifax Junction line at Hammerton Street on the outskirts of Bradford, to a new junction at Mill Lane, just outside the Exchange station, completing the railway known today as the Caldervale Line.

The section of line between Bowling and Hammerton Street was closed during the cutbacks of the late 20th Century, and so trains between Halifax and Leeds using the Caldervale Line have to run down the steep incline from Bowling, reverse at Bradford Interchange and take the 1864 line back up the hill to Hammerton Street and on to Leeds.

The original route between Brighouse and Normanton is still in use, however trains do not regularly run through between Manchester and Leeds on the whole of length of this route except when engineering work diversions take place.

Note to self, may be a good idea to add a diagram of the layout here

Despite the competition, there was enough traffic to go round and both routes largely survived the cuts of the late 20th Century, however several of the connections between Milner Royd Junction and Mirfield station linking the LNW's route and the L&YR's route were removed, along with the closure of little-used stations.

Between Blackpool & Hebden Bridge
East Lancs Railway yadah yadah yadah, Burnley to Copy Pit, meet up with main line at Hall Royd; Preston to Blackpool

Recent Improvements
Brighouse station was re-opened in 2000, and services between Huddersfield, Halifax and Bradford re-instated. A further improvement when the Northern Rail franchise started in December 2004 saw the Huddersfield Line service between Wakefield and Huddersfield extended via Brighouse and Halifax to Selby, and in December 2007, an additional hourly direct service between Hebden Bridge and Leeds via Brighouse and the Huddersfield Line was introduced.

The open-access operator Grand Central Railway proposed using the Caldervale Line to run services between Bradford and London via Brighouse and Wakefield.

Manchester to Sowerby Bridge
Write route description from Manchester Victoria to Sowerby Bridge

Blackpool to Hebden Bridge
Write route description over Copy Pit, ELR route

Sowerby Bridge to Leeds via Bradford
Write route description between Sowerby / Milner Royd Junction to Leeds via Bradford

Sowerby Bridge to Brighouse
The Manchester & Leeds route as constructed used the easier

Services Today
Add this bit - 2008 service frequency, PTE regs etc