MEMBERS of a pressure group in south Bradford say all they want for Christmas is their new railway station.

Work is due to start on the long-awaited station at Low Moor in the next few weeks and is due to finish in spring 2016.

But the Friends of Low Moor Station, which led the campaign for the new facility, is now calling on the West Yorkshire Combined Authority to fast-track work so it can open this year, in the 50th anniversary year of the old station being closed.

Friends group founder member and chairman Dave Stevens said: "On July 28 at the Oakenshaw Village Gala we’ll be handing out 50th birthday balloons to celebrate the anniversary of the closure and we’ll be asking everyone in the village to write a letter to Santa asking for the railway station to reopen in time for Christmas.

"After all, we have been very good."

The development of the station was first mooted in 1999 but has been beset with problems and delays.

Vice chairman of the friends group, Councillor David Warburton (Lab, Wyke), said: "There’s an awful lot of local people who still think that it’s never going to happen. Well we never gave up on the station, and now it is happening, indeed, it is happening right now.

"Local residents will have already seen a digger and some cones appear on site.

"Technically this is for the highway works around the station rather than building the station itself, but it’s still a huge psychological improvement from repeatedly looking at plans, which is where we’d been stuck for years."

James Vasey, treasurer of the group and chairman of the Bradford Rail Users Forum, said: "When the station opens there’ll be one train per hour to Bradford and Leeds, and one train per hour to Halifax and Huddersfield, but this is really just the start.

"Grand Central have applied to stop their Bradford to London trains at the station.

"Direct services to Manchester, and possibly Manchester airport are a real probability in the near future. We’re confident that this station will be the catalyst for real economic growth in and around south Bradford."

A spokesman for the West Yorkshire Combined Authority said: "We have been grateful for the constructive input of the Friends of Low Moor during the development of this project and are sure they will be pleased that works to provide access to the new station and car park are already under way and work on the station itself is scheduled to start in the next few weeks.

“We are working hard to deliver the new station by a target date of the end of April 2016."

Low Moor is not the only new station being built in Bradford this year. The facility under construction at Apperley Bridge is scheduled to open this September.