magine a railway line which started at Forster Square Station, passed through Frizinghall and Shipley to Windhill, then continued through Thackley and Idle to Eccleshill and Laisterdyke and finally descended to Bradford Interchange.

What an asset that would be to the city, linking the two stations via a loop and bringing in commuters from the northern suburbs in whichever direction suited them best.

It will never happen now, of course. The railway which once existed and could have provided the basis for such a route is long gone and largely built over. And even when it did exist it wasn’t fully joined up.

It ran from Bradford Exchange only as far as an end-of-the-line station near the bottom of Carr Lane, Windhill, a short but significant stride away from the present main-line Shipley station.

That it did so is one of the reasons why it failed as a passenger route and was turned over to freight-only in 1931. It was a victim of competition between the Great Northern Railway Company, which operated it, and the Midland Railway Company, which owned Shipley Station and wouldn’t let its rivals use it.

The story of that Idle line, which survived until 1968 as a freight route (plus a few “specials” taking trippers to the coast) is one of the many told in Along Familiar Lines, Mark Neale’s splendid new book telling the human story of railways in the Bradford area.

It’ll ring many a bell with anyone who was ever a member of that army of individuals generally known as “trainspotters”, a term which Mark admits has nowadays become a byword for “a kind of social leper”.

Back in the 1950s and 1960s, though, there was no such prejudice against it. Most teenage lads did it. And a lot of them sneaked off to the engine sheds in Leeds – particularly Holbeck – to wander illegally among the mighty locos and cross off their numbers in the Ian Allan “combines” – the combined volume listing all locomotive numbers from the four regional divisions operated by British Railways – while the foremen often turned a blind eye.

Mark says: “I must take my hat off to all these railway men, who despite the fact that sheds were dangerous places, realised the attraction to us youngsters, and allowed us to have our fun. There were no health and safety regulations then and we lived in a much more free and liberal world.

“We knew we were technically trespassing and we knew if we had an accident it was our fault, and there was none of the claim mentality we see today, which has changed the world so much…”

The book charts the coming of the railways to the Bradford area – not an easy district to develop, given the large number of cuttings and tunnels it required in the days when the work was done with picks, shovels and dynamite.

There were the inevitable casualties. The Queensbury, Clayton and Thackley tunnels all claimed their victims. At Queensbury, the rope securing a metal cage broke and it hurtled down the shaft, striking three men who were working below. One was killed instantly, the others badly injured.

In the Clayton incident, a winchman whose brain was still befuddled from the previous night’s drinking raised the cage carrying workmen instead of lowering it, causing it to crash against the pit-head gear (a similar thing had happened at Queensbury).

Some of the workers were thrown clear, others fell screaming down the shaft as the cage plummeted. Two men died.

Queensbury station is something of a legend. Down a steep hill well below Queensbury, in fact almost closer to Clayton, it was a triangular arrangement with inner and outer platforms on all three sides and a signal box at each corner.

Halifax lay to the south-west via the Queensbury tunnel. Another tunnel showed the way to Bradford. And heading north via various viaducts and tunnels was what was known as “The Alpine Route” carrying passengers to Keighley.

Mark Neale quotes the experiences of Eric Brook, who joined the railway in 1935 and in 1944 found himself operating the signals at Queensbury. It was a busy box, on the Bradford side.

“Trains ran every hour and they all came in at once,” Eric recalled. “First you’d get the outers and then, an hour later, you’d get the inners. One train used to deliver a fish wagon.”

The downside of the job was that Eric, who lived at Horton Bank Top, used to have to walk to work in the pitch dark across three or four fields.

“I fell over cows and horses – just walked into them,” he said. “There was this sheepdog – it never barked, just followed me until I was off the premises. One night I crossed this lane and ran smack into a corrugated lamp-post. There was blood everywhere.”

A fascinating reminder of the effects of inflation is a letter dated August 25, 1976 from the Divisional Commercial Manager’s Office or BR in Leeds to Mr R Mozejko, of Windhill, referring to the hire of a train to carry soccer fans to a match at Barnsley, starting at Forster Square and calling at Shipley in both directions.

The charge for a 500-seater train was £400. Small wonder British Railways didn’t make a profit!

Along Familiar Lines by Mark Neale, extensively illustrated with rare photographs from the author’s collection, is published by City Gent Publications. It’s available at Saltaire Bookshop for £3.50 or from City Gent, PO Box 56, Bradford BD13 3XW for £4 including postage. The author – who spent most of his young life in Shipley and Saltaire – will be giving a presentation about the book at Saltaire Bookshop on Thursday, October 2 (6.30-8.30pm).