Woodhead line: Museum to celebrate Manchester-Sheffield rail link

Plans have been submitted for a museum celebrating a railway line which once linked Manchester and Sheffield.

Documents lodged with Tameside Council said the site at Guide Bridge station would highlight the Woodhead line, which opened in 1845.

The link was broken when a section from Hadfield in Derbyshire to Penistone in South Yorkshire was shut in 1981.

The Woodhead Railway Heritage Group (WRHG) said it hoped the museum would "become a tourist attraction".

The Local Democracy Reporting Service said the line, which passes through the northern Peak District via the Woodhead Tunnels, became the first UK overhead electric route when it was electrified in 1953.

Services still run on the line from Manchester to Glossop and Hadfield to the west of the tunnels, while in the east, only a short section near Barnsley is used by services between Sheffield and Huddersfield.

In a planning document, the group said the museum would be housed in a former Network Rail office building at the Tameside station, which has been empty since 2013, but was formerly used by a signalling and track maintenance team.

Network Rail has been carrying out renovation work on the building, off Guide Lane in Audenshaw, since 2020 to prepare for its use as a museum.

In the plans, WRHG said the museum would "become a tourist attraction for the local area and community" and house "displays of artefacts [and] information on the history of the Woodhead Railway".

The plans do not include any parking provision, as the group wants visitors to use public transport.

WRHG, which was established in 2016, has also been raising funds for the renovation of the last surviving 506 cab, which it hopes will eventually be displayed at the museum.

A decision on the plans is expected to be made by the council by mid-September.

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