The Otley and Ilkley Joint Railway was a railway line running between the towns of Otley and Ilkley in West Yorkshire. The line was managed and run jointly by the Midland Railway (MR) and the North Eastern Railway (NER) and was 6+1⁄2 miles (10 km) long. Opened to passenger traffic on 1 August 1865 and freight traffic some months later, the line ran for almost 100 years before partial closure in July 1965 when the line to Otley closed. Today passenger services run over the rest of the line as part of the West Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive (WYPTE) Wharfedale Line.
Former railway between Otley and Pool in Wharfedale
Railway Clearing House diagram of the line
The northwestern node of Milnerwood junction connected the abandoned Otley branch to what is now known as the Wharfedale Line, which is still in use and supports modern day rail traffic
A footpath lined with trees marks the former railway route to the west of Otley, between what were the old Milnerwood and Burley Junctions
Ilkley railway station
Videos
Ilkley railway station serves Ilkley in the City of Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. On the Wharfedale Line, it is served by Class 333 electric trains run by Northern Trains, which also manages the station.
The view from the footbridge
A DMU at Platform 3 in the 1970s
A train waits at Platform 2 to start a service to Leeds
Platform 2