By Peter Fox
IT IS an interesting fact that with the conversion of the railway in Oldham to the Metrolinktram service Saddleworth now has the last remaining railway station in the Oldham borough at Greenfield.
Sddleworth did however at one time boast eleven stations (including halts): Delph Station, Diggle Station, Dobcross Halt, Friezland Station, Grasscroft Halt, Greenfield Station, Grotton and Springhead Station, Measurements Halt at Dobcross, Moorgate Halt at Uppermill, Uppermill Station and Saddleworth Station.
The railway age first came to Saddleworth with the construction of the main line by theHuddersfield and Manchester Railway Company.
The line was opened through Saddleworth on July 18, 1849 with a mammoth inaugural train traversing this new route through the Pennines.
A newspaper reporter commented on the grandeur of the scheme, remarking of the three-mile long Standedge Tunnel “the longest yet formed” at the time and also praisedthe grandeur of the “immense viaduct which spans the valley at Brownhill”.
The second section of railway to be built was the Delph branch which extended from Greenfield to Delph. Although the Delph line had been in the original plans with the building of the main line, with the costs incurred on the mammoth engineering works the company was not in any mood to incur additional costs and build a short branch line on what it saw as of little potential importance from the small textile district of Delph.
The inhabitants of Delph were somewhat frustrated by this decision and aided by local manufacturer James Lees who resided at Delph Lodge pressure was put on the company to build the branch.
Their efforts were successful and the branch was opened on Monday, September 1,1851. There was little effort from the company to celebrate the event, with simply a train plying backwards and forwards on the day.
The line soon took on the nickname of the ’Delph Donkey’ following on from the fact that some of the early services were horse-drawn along the line.
On the July 5, 1856 the branch from Greenfield to Oldham was opened and the line along with the Delph Branch as a whole took on the nickname of the ‘Delph Donkey‘.
By the 1890s the main line was carrying so much traffic that congestion at Diggle had already prompted the building of another single line tunnel and it was decided to build a loop line from Stalybridge to Diggle on the eastern side of the valley, which opened in 1885.
The line included stations at Uppermill and Friezland and these opened in May 1886;both these stations are still standing.
Next month, the second part of the article will look at where all this rail network went but also look at two lines running through Saddleworth that were proposed but never built.
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