The Keighley & Worth Valley Railway has been named as one of the 50 best great railway journeys in the world - and among the top ten in Britain. It was selected by a panel of writers and journalists who drew up the list for The Independent newspaper's information supplement on Saturday. They describe the line as a 'refreshing fragment of old Yorkshire' climbing from soot-blackened stone buildings of the Yorkshire industrial town to open moorland.

K&WVR chairman Graham Mitchell says: "Most of the examples were epic journeys such as Montreal to Vancouver or Melbourne to Alice Springs, but there among the UK list were three of Britain's great heritage railways - The Bluebell in Sussex, the Ffestiniog in Snowdonia and the K&WVR."

"I am exceptionally pleased that not only our railway but our local landscape is rated so highly by writers with worldwide experience of train travel." The award-winning railway, which travels five miles from Keighley to Oxenhope, last year carried 114,000 passengers on both steam and diesel driven trains. In its heyday in the 1980s it carried up to 170,000 throughout the year and Mr Mitchell blames the fall - which has also hit other attractions - on the introduction of Sunday trading.

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