FOR almost a century Darwen had its own 'railway line with no passengers'.

In 1876 the two-mile route from Goosehouse Bridge to Hoddlesden opened with hopes that it would carry people as well as goods but the the upgrade never happened.

However the line lasted for freight until 1962.

Local historian Jeffrey Booth has recently researched its history for Cottontown, the Blackburn with Darwen community history website.

In 1864 Hoddlesden was booming with coal mines, brick making and cotton mills. Owners John and Joseph Place, Adam Bullough, Philip Graham, and William Bayne Ranken started building houses for their workers.

They also wanted transport to Hoddlesden so applied to Parliament for a railway line, authorised in 1872.

Although Mr Bullough gave money and land for stations at Hoddlesden and Waterside, they were refused and the line opened in 1876 as goods only.

It stretched for two miles ending at Hoddlesden goods yard. Mr Ranken felt there would soon be a passenger service but this was not to be.

The day it opened there was a village party on the field behind the Griffin pub (now the Ranken Arms) with a marquee and a 'sit down' meal.

The original line included a siding to Bullough's Waterside fire clay works and a branch to the Hoddlesden pipe works. In 1908 a circular loop was constructed at the Whitebirk brick and tile works where after 1950 traffic terminated. The surviving section closed in 1962.

Its 30-year-old diesel engine was sold to a Cheshire salt mine and the material from its private sidings were bought by Derbyshire's Crich Tramway Museum

Evidence of the line can be seen today. The buttress of the bridge which carried it over Roman Road remains as do old lines from the goods yard to the Pipe Works.

Mr Ranken died in Gibraltar. His embalmed body in a shell coffin was sent in a packing case to Liverpool as a box of machinery. On arrival at Darwen Station the porter, expecting a coffin, said this was an inaccurate consignment making the Ranken family pay the difference.

His body was taken on a railway company lorry to St Paul's Church in Hoddlesden for burial on April 16 1889 so the story he thus became the railway's only passenger sadly is not true!​