Brewery Jct to Wakefield

Join us in the cab of a Class 66 of DB Cargo from Brewery Junction, north-east of Manchester Victoria, to Wakefield. This is the second part of a journey which began at Warrington Bank Quay. We’re pulling near 2,000 tons of household waste, so it’s best to maintain momentum once we get under way, but we’re thwarted on a number of occasions by danger signals and an unnecessary detour.

Our routing takes us on the Calder Valley Line, the first trans-Pennine railway across the divide between Manchester and Leeds, by way of Rochdale and Hebden Bridge. We’ll be shadowed by the Rochdale Canal for the first part, and by the Calder & Hebble Navigation for the final section to our destination.

At the line’s highest point we travel through Summit Tunnel, the world’s longest railway tunnel when it opened in 1841. The climb to the west portal is hard in places with a gradient as steep as 1:126, and the eastern side twists and turns in a helter-skelter descent that challenged the engineers who built the railway to find a path. 

By the time we reach Heaton Lodge Junction, where the later 1848 cross-Pennine route from Stalybridge to Huddersfield merges, the river valley has grown in width. We’ll already have encountered a number of temporary or emergency speed restrictions, but it’s here that we begin to run into traffic, and a section of line which was notorious for delays during the development period of the railways presents us with a series of double yellow, yellow and danger aspects.

We take a painful detour through the remains of Healey Mills sidings, once one of the biggest marshalling yards in the country. Unusually, we do this against a danger aspect, with shunting lights providing limited authority to proceed. 

Throughout the journey, on-screen graphics provide full information about stations, signal aspects, theatre boxes, permissive speeds, emergency and temporary speed restrictions, and advance speed warning signs. There’s full, knowledgeable commentary, with the ability to turn it off and concentrate on the growl of the Class 66 and the in-cab warning sounds.