SecretLeeds - History, culture and architecture in Leeds

You can judge the sheer scale of this man made cutting & retaining wall compared to the 8' high fence in the tunnel mouth.

The view from the Carlisle road bridge

BRB BP 014.. British rail board. Pudsey no 14. The bridge wall proudly displaying it's identity marker will soon be the only sign of the old Pudsey loop. I can't help but think what a short sighted & criminal act of vandalism closing all these branch lines down was.. How many people living in Pudsey would love to leave there cars behind & use this service today? Also if the G.N.R went to great lenghts to build this line 100+ years ago then why can't Leeds the 3rd largest city manage to get there supertram up & running when many lesser towns & city's have there's? I suppose that's called *progress*

Great pictures Phill. I've been interested in the pudsey loop since i was a kid and have got to agree with your comments. i could guarantee the traffic into town from west leeds during rush hour would be so much less if this line was still open. The new station is just too far from any large population areas for it to be of any use.I keep meaning to take a walk round the loop but have never got round to it, i really need to get my skates on if i want to see the tunnel in all it's glory before the landfill. Things like this need to be preserved.It's strange but a mate of mine a few weeks ago asked me why there was a pub in pudsey called the Railway as in his words "the railway is miles away"!!! The ignorant fool has lived in pudsey for years and never once thought about all the bridges that he drives over everyday!!

Absolutely Farnley. The amount of people living on old rail lines haven't got a clue... People live on top of tunnels & never know. Yep you better get your skates on for the tunnel. It's scheduled for infill this year (Although i'm pleased to see there's no sign of action yet) I think the old bridge at Bramley is still intact & then there's a half mile filled in section where lowtown station was. Next stop is Greenside tunnel where you can walk the Smalewell bank & then the line just dissapears. Well worth a look tho.

All the half mile cutting is filled in but there are numerous overbridges along the route. All look rather strange with 'no legs' It's strange to think trains rushed along 20' below here.

The ruins of Smalewell bridge just after the embankement. A truly enormous structure that crosses the smallest of Bridlepaths along Tyresal lane a stones throw to Bradford. I was daft enough to walk that one day. Mind you i got the bus back. I suppose been an ex postie made the walk easy

Brilliant stuff, Phil. Keep it coming!

One of the greatest travesties is the big ugly block of maisonettes they've dumped on the old Lowtown station site, absolutely horrendous. Although saying all that about people not knowing what they are living on makes me feel ignorant about all the light railway stuff we've discovered in farnley, Wortley and Armley the last few days that i never knew about

Same here. I've been all over Leeds & just about sussed everything out. all exept the Farnley fireclay.. thats bugged me for a long time. It's not well documented for such a big operation. It's good to get everything on the net for posteriety i think.. There is so much more to Copley hill/Wortley rec area. If you look at where the old Wortley curve crosses the Leeds-Manchester line you can see it used to have very wide abutments. You can still see them in the undergrowth. There's also a mystery retaining wall near Geldered rd jnct i can't work out what that was for... I'm sure we can suss the mystery out over time