A quiet stretch of track has become the unlikely success of the region’s rail plan.

The first passenger train in 54 years left Calder Central for the upper valley at 6.12 on Monday morning, carrying a little over 200 people, a brass band from Ardle and one retired signalman who had worked the line on the day it closed. The Valley Line was originally due to reopen in the autumn of 2028. It has arrived two years early and, according to the regional transport authority, about £11 million under its budget of £96 million.

The route runs 19 miles from the city to the terminus at Brackwater, with new or rebuilt stations at Ardle, Millbeck, Thornside and the hill village of Coldwell. Trains will run every half hour on weekdays and hourly on Sundays, with the full journey taking 34 minutes. On the old timetable, the bus took an hour and ten minutes when the road was clear and considerably longer when it was not.

How it came in early

The project was never the region’s showpiece. That title belonged to the airport link and the old town tram extension, both of which have suffered delays. The Valley Line, by contrast, reused an existing trackbed that had been kept clear as a cycle path, and most of its bridges and cuttings were in better condition than engineers expected. When a survey in the first year found that the stone viaduct at Millbeck needed only repointing rather than rebuilding, the authority brought forward the track-laying contract by eleven months.

The rest of the saving came from decisions that were unfashionable at the time. The authority chose standard diesel-electric units ordered alongside a larger fleet for the coast line, rather than a bespoke design, and built simple single-platform stations with shelters rather than staffed buildings. Several members of the Assembly criticised the stations as bare when the designs were published. On Monday, few passengers seemed to mind.

“We were told to build a railway, not a monument. Every time someone suggested something clever, we asked whether it would get the trains running sooner. Usually the answer was no.”

Those were the words of Lorna Pettigrew, the authority’s project director, who has worked on the scheme since the first feasibility study eight years ago. She said the team had also benefited from a single contractor managing both the track and the stations, which meant that crews could move between sites without waiting for separate approvals.

What it means along the line

In Ardle, the change is already visible. The town’s high street, which lost its bank and two pubs in the last decade, has three new businesses near the station entrance, including a bakery that opened at 5.30 on Monday to catch the first commuters. Estate agents report that asking prices for houses within walking distance of the station have risen by about eight per cent since the opening date was confirmed in the spring, a trend that has worried some residents who fear being priced out by city workers.

Further up the valley, the effect is more about access than property. Coldwell has no secondary school, no supermarket and, until now, a bus service that stopped at 6pm. Students at the sixth-form college in Calder will now be able to travel in less than half an hour. Freya Ashdown, who chairs the Coldwell parish council, said the line would decide whether young families stayed in the village or left it.

Some issues remain unresolved. The authority has not yet confirmed whether late-evening services will run on Fridays and Saturdays, and cycling groups are still negotiating over the loss of the old trackbed path, part of which has been replaced by a narrower route alongside the railway fence. A promised car park at Thornside will not open until the spring because of a dispute over drainage.

The next test

Passenger forecasts suggest about 1.4 million journeys a year once the service settles down. If that figure is met, the authority says it will make the case for extending the line beyond Brackwater to the quarry town of Fellgate, a further six miles. The trackbed there is overgrown but intact, and the authority has already commissioned a survey of its three tunnels.

For now, the regional rail plan has a success it can point to, and it has come from the line that almost nobody was watching.