East Lancashire line
railway line in the UK
The East Lancashire line is a railway route in Lancashire, England. It connects Preston and Colne, via Blackburn, Accrington, Burnley Central and Nelson. The line formerly ran on to Skipton, but this section was closed in 1970. It is operated by Northern Trains.
History
The line was built by the Blackburn and Preston Railway and the Blackburn, Burnley, Accrington and Colne Extension Railway. Both companies were later absorbed by the East Lancashire Railway on 3 August 1846 and 21 July 1845 respectively. The East Lancashire Railway was, in turn, absorbed by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway on 13 May 1859.
The line connected end-on at Colne with the Leeds and Bradford Extension Railway's line to Skipton and Bradford; this 11+1⁄2-mile (18.5 km) link closed in 1970. The Skipton–East Lancashire Rail Action Partnership (SELRAP) now campaigns to reinstate it. The section from Colne to Nelson was singled in the following year, with the rest of the line to Gannow Junction being so treated in December 1986.
The public source identifies “East Lancashire line” as railway line in the UK. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around East, Lancashire and line.
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This entry incorporates text from “East Lancashire line” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.