Railways of Bradford

The Leeds and Bradford Railway opened Bradford’s first railway station at the bottom of Kirkgate on 1 July 1846. It offered a service via Shipley to Leeds and through Leeds to other centres, including London. The line was soon absorbed by the Midland Railway, and the station was rebuilt in the early 1850’s and again, much larger, in 1890. Today it is a small utilitarian station dating from 1990, called Forster Square station, though it is somewhat distant from the site of its predecessors, and from Forster Square itself. It connects directly to Leeds, Ilkley and Skipton, and there is a limited direct service to London King’s Cross.

The Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway opened its station at Drake Street on 9 May 1850, on its line between Manchester and Leeds. The Great Northern Railway opened a third terminus at Adolphus Street in 1854, serving Leeds and other places on its network, but the station was too far from the centre, and the two companies eventually agreed to build a joint station to replace the L&Y’s station at Drake Street. This was Bradford Exchange station, opened in 1867: Adolphus Street remained as a goods terminal. The Exchange Station was completely rebuilt in 1880, with ten platforms; but by 1973 it was too large and again was rebuilt on a different site. In 1983 that station was renamed Bradford Interchange when a bus station was built alongside. It connects directly to Leeds, to Manchester Victoria and to Blackpool. See this site

Both stations are under the control of the West Yorkshire Metro as part of the Leeds-Bradford Line routes.

From the 1870’s the Great Northern built several suburban railway lines around Bradford:
from Laisterdyke via Idle to Shipley and Windhill
from Exchange to Queensbury, and thence to Keighley and Halifax,
from Low Moor to Dudley Hill, thence to the Pudsey loop, and to Dewsbury.

These all closed at various times between the 1930’s and the 1960’s.

There have been many schemes to build a link between Bradford’s main rail termini, but none has ever come near fruition. The main practical difficulty is the great difference in elevation: the Exchange/Interchange station is already at the bottom of a long slope, steep by railway standards, but it is several metres higher than Forster Square Station