|
Contributors: ©
Reproduction prohibited / Rikj
/ Graeme Bickerdike /
Melvyn Aveyard / Phill Davison / Des Phillips / Lost Railways |
The Route
Branch Lines from both Stanningley & Bramley to Pudsey Greenside via
Pudsey Lowtown. Later extended to Cutlers junction to join the
Ardsley Laisterdyke line.
Openings
1st April 1878, between Stanningley & Pudsey Greenside.
1893, the branch was formed into a loop off the main Leeds Bradford
line, track was laid between Bramley & Pudsey.
Line extended from Pudsey Greenside to Cutlers junction
Closure
Branch lines & Pudsey stations closed July 1964.
Stanningley closed 30th December 1967
|
 |
 Low
Town Road B6154 (25-07-09) : Lost Railways
Facing East. |
 Low
Town Road B6154 (25-07-09) : Lost Railways
View of the bridge from down on the right. |
 Longfield
road (25-07-09) : Lost Railways
Down the bottom end of Longfield road, near Longfield Court. Small
overbridge allowing footpath access to nowhere.
Allotments to the right. |
 Longfield
road (25-07-09) : Lost Railways
Closer view of the brickwork. |
 Robin
lane (25-07-09) : Lost Railways
Facing north, Ravens Mount road on the right. |
 Robin
lane (25-07-09) : Lost Railways
The view of the right hand side of the bridge from the footpath. |
 Radcliffe
lane (25-07-09) : Lost Railways
The View down Radcliffe Lane, facing east. |
 South
Parade (25-07-09) : Lost Railways
Footpath crossing at the corner of South Parade, facing east towards
Littlemoor road. |
 New
Street (25-07-09) : Lost Railways
Facing east down New street. Pudsey Greenside station to the right.
Housing estate now built on the site. |
 New
Street (25-07-09) : Lost Railways
Opposite side of the road. That's my daughter skulking off down the
footpath. |
Pudsey Greenside Station
 Pudsey
Greenside (25-07-09) : Lost Railways
Looking over the bridge on Carlisle road down onto
the site of Pudsey Greenside. The big city of Leeds visible in the
distance. |
Pudsey
Greenside Tunnel
Note : Melvyn Aveyard (18-05-06)
I here locally that planning permission has now been granted to backfill
the Greenside tunnel & associated cuttings.
Don't know when this will happen. |
Note : Graeme Bickerdike (23-11-06)
website - http://www.forgottenrelics.co.uk/
I took a trip out to Pudsey today to take a look at Greenside tunnel
before it gets lost under the dreaded landfill. No sign yet of work
getting underway. I understand it will only affect the eastern approach
cutting but the portal will be sealed. A few pictures attached - |
 Pudsey
Greenside tunnel eastern portal (23-11-06) : Graeme Bickerdike
At the soon-to-be-lost eastern end, the sheer
approach cutting is already used as a rubbish tip.
Planning permission has been granted for this to be infilled. |
 Pudsey
Greenside tunnel eastern portal (23-11-06) : Graeme Bickerdike
There’s either been a landslip or tipping close to
the portal, restricting access. This end is to be sealed.
|
 Pudsey
Greenside tunnel eastern portal (01-05-07) : Phill Davison
website -
http://flickr.com/photos/phill_dvsn/sets/72157594397421428/
Detailed study of the Leeds end portal partly obscured by landslip or
tipping. |
 View out of the eastern portal
(31-07-05) : Rikj
The eastern portal
has an intact security fence, though once again this has been tunnelled
under.
This portal is in a cutting.
P.S. While googling for info I found out that this eastern portal cutting
is
the one in danger of being land-filled.
This is in addition to the Midland
goods cutting. |
 Pudsey
Greenside tunnel interior (23-11-06) : Graeme Bickerdike
The tunnel itself is 616 yards long, with a curve
to the south. The white splodge to the right of centre is light from the
eastern end. The walls are stoned-lined whilst the roof is brick. |
 Refuge (16-04-10) : Phill Davison
Old habits die hard. 2nd October 1976. Football hooligan graffiti in the
abandoned Pudsey Greenside railway tunnel.
Leeds lost 2-0.
See Phills photo stream on Flickr-
http://www.flickr.com/photos/phill_dvsn/476694432/in/photostream/ |
 The
airshaft (31-07-05) : Rikj
The tunnel is generally dry-ish with a couple of leaks in the arched
brick roof. The floor appears to have been graded by something like a
tarmac stripper and is ridged along its length.
All the refuges are intact but we saw no other artefacts.
One nice feature is the air-shaft, which looks to be capped with
concrete. |
 The
airshaft (16-04-10) : Phill Davison
This is the only ventilation shaft in Pudsey Greenside tunnel. It's
situated around 413 yards in from the East portal (Leeds end of the
tunnel) The brick lined shaft is around 40/50 feet deep. The top of this
shaft appears to be a circular depression/outline in a back garden on
West Royd Avenue. (see aerial image, and map below) |
 The
airshaft 1908 map & Google Earth (16-04-10) : Phill Davison
The tunnel appears to be in someone's back garden on West Royd Avenue.
I've marked the circular depression on the Google aerial image & the
1908 map seems to confirm this is where the air shaft is situated today.
(See below) |
The Airshaft Map merge (02-06-10) :
Graeme Bickerdike
website - http://www.forgottenrelics.co.uk/
_small.jpg) The
attached might help in your/Phill D's search for Greenside Tunnel's
ventilation shaft (structure number BPL 14A SH1).
The MapMerge file is an overlay of a GoogleEarth image from 2009 with a
1908/9 map.
This technique works reasonably accurately - usually to within 10 feet
or so. It suggests that Greenside's shaft is beneath an access road to
garages off Wheatfield Court, behind Smalewell Road. It is around 240
yards from the tunnel's west portal. |
_small.jpg) The
Airshaft Circular depression (02-06-10) : Graeme Bickerdike
The other file shows the circular 'depression' spotted by PhillD on the
2009 GoogleEarth view. However this was not there in 2006 (inset). If
you look closely, the feature appears to have a shadow to its right,
suggesting that it is actually some sort of structure. |
 Tunnel (16-04-10) : Phill Davison
Inside the 616 yard tunnel.
See Phills photo stream on Flickr-
http://www.flickr.com/photos/phill_dvsn/476694432/in/photostream/ |
_small.jpg) The
Airshaft (02-06-10) : Graeme Bickerdike
I visited the tunnel yesterday and found that the access gates at both
ends had been dismantled. As a result I was able to capture the attached
view looking towards the east end from the bottom of the shaft. The
tunnel has an S-shaped curvature but you are always in sight of one
entrance. |
 Pudsey
Greenside tunnel interior (23-11-06) : Graeme Bickerdike
website - http://www.forgottenrelics.co.uk/
The depth of the refuges is unusually generous.
Perhaps the Great Northern took trackworker safety more seriously than
its competitors or maybe it had a fatter workforce! |
 Western
portal (31-07-05) : Rikj
The security gate had been jacked off its hinges. Not sure why as the
padlock had also been removed. Don't know why they bothered doing that
either as it's possible to crawl under the fence anyway. The tunnel
itself shows little sign of vandalism,
graffiti or litter. There are unaccountably lots of pieces of wood
throughout the tunnel. |
 Pudsey
Greenside tunnel western portal (23-11-06) : Graeme Bickerdike
Greenside’s western portal looks out over a
rusting oil drum and the ubiquitous shopping trolley.
Great autumn colours though. |
 Bridge
(23-11-06) : Graeme Bickerdike
Fifty yards from the western portal is a bridge which carried a
lane down the hill to Smalewell quarries. Beyond it, the line crossed
Pudsey Beck on an embankment which was reputed to be the largest in
Europe. |
Pudsey
Greenside tunnel drunken exploration (12-12-05) : Des Phillips
A friend J was lodging in Pudsey after splitting up with
his girlfriend, late 2002. He used to go for last orders with a
beer-oriented mate H at the excellent Fox and Grapes; a pub just above
the West portal of Greenside tunnel. One night when I was visiting him
from Cambridge, after our normal powers of unimaginative common sense
were suitably anaesthetised, we decided that it would be a great idea to
bash the tunnel in darkness by the light of H's rather dim torch. Not
only that, but to take H's two Alsatians out for a nocturnal
subterranean walk, who treated the experience with alacrity as if it
were a walk in the park.
Greenside's a dry, rather pleasant tunnel to bash in comparison to some
others we'd done (by accidentally losing our way on country walks, of
course). Progress through the tunnel was interrupted by J and H stopping
to light roll-up fags... a stiff breeze through the tunnel making
lighting-up difficult. The Alsatians roamed and snuffled around
enthusiastically among the ridges left by the ballast scraping. J even
managed to make an alcophilic call on his mobile half-way through the
tunnel! Don't know how that worked unless we got some peculiar GHz
wave-guiding to the base-station! (I work in radio systems and still
don't know how we achieved that). |
Cutlers
Junction
  Cutlers Junction (c1960) :
Dennis Sefton
|
 Cutlers
Junction signal box diagram : Mark Neale
The diagram is dated 29/4/63 signed A F Wigram Chief S&T Engineer. |
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