Notes: Elslack is little more than a hamlet located about half a mile from the A56 Skipton-Colne road at the foot of Elslack Moor which rises to 1,275ft. To the north-west stretches the Craven country drained by the rivers Aire and Ribble and distinguished by the numerous, small plump hills – drumlins, a remnant of past glacial action. Whilst the Leeds & Liverpool Canal follows a serpentine path between these drumlins (known by some as the Hills of Elslack) the railway simply cuts through them. The area is only lightly populated and Elslack station was never of great importance, being the first to close on the Skipton-Colne route.

The station’s platforms were staggered either side of the bridge over Elslack Lane, the up (Skipton-bound) platform being displaced north-east of the down platform. The main facilities were towards the south-western end of the up platform. The original station building was moved here from Shipley where it had been considered inadequate; the Midland Railway traffic committee made this decision in October 1849. Binns (2008) assumes that it was of timber construction. The permanent station building in which the booking office and waiting facilities were found was of brick construction, a single-storey structure of modest dignity. The roof was hipped and the door and window openings were segmental arches. Some decoration was supplied by dentillation of the cornices. The building at Thornton-in-Craven, the next station towards Colne, was of the same style. The stationmaster’s house stood immediately north-east of the station building. This was a brick-built, two-storey affair with an overhanging steeply pitched, slate roof, broken by a gabled dormer on the platform elevation. The north-east gable end was rendered and distinguished by unusually narrow windows on both storeys. The signal box was several yards north-east of the up platform ramp.

The down platform, surprisingly, is shown neither on the Ordnance Survey 1: 2,500 map of 1894 nor on the next edition of this map dated 1909. Perhaps because it was on an embankment where a masonry structure could have been too heavy it was of timber construction. An enclosed waiting room was provided in a small timber building supported on struts at the north-eastern end of the platform. The 1952 photograph shows that an LMS ‘Hawkseye’ running in nameboard was fitted close to the building; its angle suggests that it might have been mounted on two of the three posts that the Midland Railway would have installed for its distinctive nameboards, as seen on the older view of the up platform. Oil lanterns lit the platforms.

A goods loop was on the down side facing the up platform, with a short branch at the south-western end serving a single-road goods warehouse, close to which was the weigh office. A cattle pen adjoined the loop at its north-eastern end, where there was also a headshunt. The Railway Clearing House Handbook of Stations (1904) states that Elslack handled general goods traffic with facilities for livestock and horse boxes and that a 1 ton 10 cwt capacity yard crane was installed.

Specimen timetables follow for Elslack station. Its level of train service was similar to Thornton and Foulridge stations; Earby enjoyed a greater frequency, being the largest settlement between Skipton and Colne as well as the junction for the Barnoldswick Branch.

Destinations of trains are not always clear in Bradshaw.

Destinations of trains are not always clear in Bradshaw.
§ Approximate time. Calls by request to take up passengers travelling north of Hellifield

Destinations of trains are not always clear in Bradshaw.

In 1923 at the ‘Grouping’ the Midland Railway lines became part of the new London, Midland & Scottish Railway (LMS). Under this regime, as noted above, new signage was installed at Elslack.

At nationalisation in 1948 Elslack passed into British Railways’ London Midland Region administration. In the summer 1950 timetable, below, Elslack was the only intermediate station between Skipton and Colne to have lost its Sunday train service. Elslack and its neighbouring station of Thornton-in-Craven had a noticeably poorer service than the other two intermediate stations between Skipton and Colne but, remarkably, Thornton survived until the closure of the line in 1970. Nevertheless, the timetable enables workers, shoppers and scholars to travel to and from Skipton, but night-time revelry in the town is not catered for.
 

Both passenger and goods traffic at this station were minimal and the station closed to all traffic on 3 March 1952. The timber down platform had been dismantled by the mid 1970s – perhaps much earlier - but the up platform was still in place in a dilapidated state in 1976. At this time the main building had been demolished but the derelict station house remained on the up platform. In 2017 Brookbank Industries, a manufacturer of textile accessories, has its factory on the down side of the old railway, north-east of the dismantled railway bridge. Fragments of the up platform remain, but the station house has gone without trace.

Tickets from Michael Stewart. Route map drawn by Alan Young.

Click here for a brief history of the Colne - Skipton line

See also: Foulridge, Earby & Thornton-in-Craven
plus Barnoldswick