When news broke earlier this year of extensive closures coming to the northern half of the West Coast Main Line for renewals of overhead wires and signalling, it naturally begged questions of whether services should instead run via the Settle and Carlisle route.
It’s been done before. Around 20 years ago, Virgin West Coast used newly converted Class 57 diesel locomotives to haul its Pendolino EMUs over the route, supplemented by VWC Voyager diesel-electric multiple units which could run without assistance.
What was VWC is now Avanti West Coast and it’s replaced Voyagers with new Class 805 and Class 807 units from Hitachi. The 13 five-car ‘805s’ are bi-mode electro-diesels units while the seven-car fleet of ten ‘807s’ are purely electric.
In contrast to its East Coast rival, LNER, Avanti West Coast does not routinely divert services away from its core WCML during engineering work. To do so would incur the costs of training crews on the diversions and, so far, this has not been considered to be worth doing.
What of the line itself, saved from British Rail’s closure plan by ministerial intervention in 1989?
From Carlisle, it runs south for almost 77 miles to reach Hellifield where trains continue either to Leeds via Skipton or head through Blackburn for Preston which is the relevant route for WCML diversions. Trains from Lancaster towards Leeds join the route at Settle Junction which is 73 miles south of Carlisle and three miles north of Hellifield.
Train leaving Preston to run to Carlisle via Settle must head first head south, traversing Faringdon Curve Junction to rise up and over the West Coast Main Line before heading east towards Blackburn on a line with speed limits varying between 45mph and 70mph.
After Blackburn comes the single-lead Daisyfield Junction which leads to double track onwards through Whalley to Clitheroe with passenger trains limited to 45mph and freight to 30mph. The line joins the S&C at Hellifield with speeds generally 60mph (except for 30mph over Ribblehead Viaduct, 20mph for freight, and through Dent station).
Petteril Bridge Junction and London Road Junction, both near Carlisle, slow trains to 20mph and the final few yards into Carlisle is again on single-track.
Today’s regular passenger service works between Carlisle and Leeds with seven trains per weekday. The first runs at 0549 and the last at 2013, each taking over 2.5 hours to reach Leeds. On Summer Saturdays, Northern runs two Rochdale-Ribblehead return services. They are the only scheduled passengers trains to run between Hellifield and Clitheroe over the route via Blackburn.
Not every passenger services calls at some of the route’s smaller station. This leads to gaps in services of nearly four hours for stations such as Langwathby and Dent.
There’s freight too but not the coal trains that pounded the line from the late 1990s now that Britain now longer burns these black diamonds to produce electricity.
Coal contributed to a sharp deterioration in the line because British Rail optimised maintenance for lightweight passenger trains. Then Railtrack (Network Rail’s predecessor) reacted slowly to the impact of running heavy freight once more.
But the line’s use for coal did lead to signalling improvements. Installation of nine intermediate block signals broke up long sections to increase capacity in 2008. This gives capacity to carry one passenger and one freight train each way every hour, according to Network Rail.
Signalling along the route is absolute block. Signalboxes sit at Hellifield, Settle Junction, Blea Moor, Garsdale, Kirkby Stephen, Appleby, Kirkby Thore, Culgaith and Low House. The section from Blackburn to Hellifield comes under the control of boxes at Daisyfield Junction (near Blackburn) and Horrocksford Junction (near Clitheroe).
Onto this, NR has added axle counters which drive the intermediate block (IB) signals installed to assist heavy coal trains on the line’s steep gradients. Across the full route from Daisyfield Junction to Carlisle, the northbound line has three IB signals and the southbound line has seven with the difference explained by loaded, and so slower, coal trains heading south.
Network Rail has recently been looking at how the line could accommodate more trains, building on a base of one stopping passenger service each way between Leeds and Carlisle every hour, which is an improvement on today’s timetable.
To this it adds a non-stop, fast service. This could be Leeds-Carlisle or Preston-Carlisle as a WCML diversion. It then looked at freight with a combination of a freight diverted from the WCML or one serving the quarries around Horton or both.
Anything beyond an hourly freight (either WCML or quarry) and hourly stopping passenger service needs extra infrastructure in the form of shorter block sections for signalling or passing loops.
Having both freight paths and the hourly stopper needs two northbound block sections split (Settle Junction-Horton and Horton-Ribblehead) and four southbound sections split (Ormside-Crosby Garrett, Kirby Stephen-Mallerstang, Garsdale-Blea Moor and Blea Moor-Helwith Bridge). This lets the two freight paths run closer together.
Adding the hourly fast passenger service needs more but leaves the line with long-term capability to improve long-distance connectivity once any West Coast diversions have ceased (although it will also depend on capacity around Leeds if that’s to be the origin/destination for such a service). However, it’s unlikely this capability would be justified on its own were it not for the need to divert services while NR upgrades overhead wires and signalling on the main Preston-Carlisle route.
Freight on the line is chiefly aggregates from the quarries at Arcow, nearby Horton-in-Ribblesdale and Ribblehead. On current working timetables, there are paths for two services from Arcow on a weekday, at 1125 and 1643, with destinations varying between Hull Dairycoates, Pendleton, Bredbury or Hunslet.
It’s a similar story for Ribblehead with working timetable paths at 0958 for Hunslet (Leeds), a 1254 for Hunslet, Tuebrook, Ashton-in-Makerfield or Pendleton and an 1815 for Hunslet or Doncaster.
Other paths can be occupied by oil trains from Grain, timber trains for Chirk, cement trains for Clitheroe as well as engineering trains running this way to avoid the WCML and other 60mph services squeezed off the WCML to make way for faster passenger and freight trains.
With services only starting in mid-June, Horton-in-Ribblesdale quarry services sit in the timetable as short-term working paths (STP) rather than established working timetable paths.
All three quarry connections face north so that loaded trains leaving must cross Ribblehead Viaduct on its single line before halting at Blea Moor where the locomotive runs round and the train heads south back over the viaduct.
To run the quarry path with two passenger services per hour demands no extra split block sections but NR suggests that splitting Settle Junction to Horton-in-Ribblesdale and Garsdale to Kirkby Stephen (both northbound) would make timetables more robust.
However, for southbound services, two sections must be split (Blea Moor-Helwith Bridge and Helwith Bridge-Settle Junction) with a third useful to robustness (Kirby Thore-Appleby).
Finding space for the just WCML freight path around two passenger services every hour needs extensive work. For northbound trains need Horrocksford Junction-Hellifield splitting around Gisburn Tunnel to allow Northern’s Rochdale-Clitheroe trains to follow a freight more closely and reverse at Horrocksford. There also needs to be a loop near Ribblehead before the single-line section over the viaduct.
Heading south, services would need a loop near Appleby and the Garsdale-Blea Moor section splitting in two to let freight reach Blea Moor loop without delaying passenger services. Not adding the loops would force the stopping passenger service onto a two-hour frequency, showing the impact of trade-offs between spending and services.
A timetable with two freights and two passenger services every hour needs the most new infrastructure. Going north, it needs Ribblehead loop and five block sections split (Horrocksford Junction-Hellifield, Horton-Ribblehead, Blea Moor-Garsdale, Garsdale-Kirkby Stephen and Kirkby Stephen-Appleby).
Heading south the demand is loops at Appleby and Kirkby Stephen and four split block sections (Ormside-Crosby Garrett, Kirkby Stephen-Mallerstang, Garsdale-Blea Moor and Blea Moor-Helwith Bridge).
Increasing overall services also puts more pressure onto London Road Junction at Carlisle and Daisyfield Junction. Both are single-lead junctions. The track at London Road runs into Carlisle in parallel with the North Eastern Shunt Line which NR could relay and reconnect into the junction to restore double-track capacity.
At Daisyfield, any doubling will need a new bridge over Fort Street because BR installed it as a single-track bridge after downgrading the junction in the 1970s.
This prospect of further increases in traffic over the Settle & Carlisle route all sits a very long way from the British Rail’s protracted but ultimately unsuccessful attempts at closure 40 years ago.
A version of this article first appeared in RAIL magazine, issue 1039, 9-23 July 2025.