WITH record numbers of people now using our railways, an outlay of £100 million to replace and upgrade the track and trackbed between Bradford Interchange and Manchester is to be welcomed.

The work is being carried out ahead of other improvements on the Calder Valley line which has, for far too long, suffered criticism for being treated as something of a backwater despite it connecting major cities across the north.

Those improvements start with the opening of a new station at Low Moor and will then be followed by a programme to replace the line’s ancient rolling stock, as part of a regional modernisation programme which will see more than 280 new purpose-built carriages brought into service allowing extra capacity.

It has to be noted, though, that frequent calls for a more ambitious scheme to provide electrification on the Calder Valley line have still to be realised.

The importance of having a fast and reliable rail network to both the district’s and the region’s economy, as roads become ever more congested, cannot be under estimated.

And much longer-term proposals to bring the high-speed HS3 Transpennine line through Bradford will be a vital component of this.

But, of course, any engineering works on the railways cannot be done without causing some disruption to services, despite such work being deliberately scheduled to take place at weekends to minimise that.

We would, therefore, urge rail users to carefully plan ahead for their journeys over the next few weeks. As the saying goes ‘there’s no gain without pain’.