Rishworth branch
The Rishworth branch was built in the Ryburn valley by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway and linked with and served the villages of Triangle, Ripponden, Barkisland and Rishworth.
History
A branch from Sowerby Bridge to Ripponden was authorised in 1865 as , with the extension to Rishworth authorised in 1870,. The line opened as far as Ripponden in 1878 and to Rishworth in 1881. The section to Ripponden was built by T. J. Walker at a cost of £113,000.It was intended to extend the line to to shorten the Calder Valley main line by, but this was ruled out quite soon after the branch opened and never taken up again. The branch line was in competition for passengers firstly with a tram line that ran up the valley, and secondly after a private firm had started running buses between Rishworth and Halifax; this took away the remaining few passengers who used the service and the line was closed to passengers to Rishworth on 8 July 1929. In an effort to save costs, the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway tried using railmotors on the branch, but the trains were unpopular with the crews who maintained that they were difficult to keep in steam, and the railmotors were withdrawn from the Sowerby Bridge area when the passenger service ceased along the branch. Special excursion trains did continue using the branch after July 1929, but these ceased at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. The section between Rishworth and Ripponden closed for freight in 1953 and Ripponden to Sowerby Bridge closed completely on 1 September 1958.