The Middleton Junction and Oldham Branch Railway (MJOBR) was opened on 31 March 1842 by the Manchester and Leeds Railway, whose chief engineer was George Stephenson. The MJOBR left the

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

to Littleborough railway line (opened on 4 July 1839), at '' Middleton Junction'' (then ''Oldham Junction'') went through the expanding town of

Chadderton Chadderton is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham, Greater Manchester, England, on the River Irk and Rochdale Canal. It is located in the foothills of the Pennines, west of Oldham, south of Rochdale and north-east of Manchester. ...

to a station in the lower part of

Oldham Oldham is a large town in Greater Manchester, England, amid the Pennines and between the rivers Irk and Medlock, southeast of Rochdale and northeast of Manchester. It is the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham ...

named Werneth. It was part of the original route to Oldham. The Werneth Incline - long - was the steepest passenger worked railway line in Britain, with a gradient of 1:27 for about . The earliest trains to use this line required cable assistance to get to the top of the incline.

Expansion

The railway did not prosper in its first few years and plans were quickly made for the railway line to come nearer the town centre of

. An extension was built to

Oldham Mumps railway station Oldham Mumps was a railway station, opened in 1847, which served the town of Oldham, Greater Manchester, England. The station was a primary station located on the Oldham Loop Line northeast of Manchester Victoria. At the time of closure, it ...

, including an intermediate station at

Oldham Central railway station Oldham Central Railway Station was opened on 1 November 1847 as part of the extension of the Middleton Junction to Oldham Werneth line to Oldham Mumps. It was eventually one of six stations in the town of Oldham and was adjacent to Clegg Street ...

. The line and stations opened on 1 November 1847. The railway prospered: Chadderton was a mining town and there were numerous

collieries Coal mining is the process of resource extraction, extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its Energy value of coal, energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use c ...

around the town; and Oldham had, in 1838, 213 textile mills, more than Manchester. The railway system around Oldham was completed when the line to

Rochdale Rochdale ( ) is a large town in Greater Manchester, England, at the foothills of the South Pennines in the dale on the River Roch, northwest of Oldham and northeast of Manchester. It is the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough ...

from Mumps opened on 12 August 1863, and the branch to

Royton Royton is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham, Greater Manchester, England, with a population of 21,284 in 2011. Close to the source of the River Irk, near undulating land at the foothills of the South Pennines, it is northwest of Old ...

was completed on 21 March 1864. Soon the railway led to all of Oldham's five railway stations: Werneth, Central, Mumps, Clegg Street, and Glodwick Road, as well as linking stations at Lees,

Derker Derker is an area of Oldham, in Greater Manchester, England. It lies in north-central Oldham, close to the boundary with Royton. History Historically a part of Lancashire, Derker was recorded as a place of residence in 1604 with the name ''Di ...

and

. On 12 August 1914 a goods and coal depot was opened at Chadderton. This was at the end of a long line which branched off the MJOBR approximately from Middleton Junction at Chadderton Junction.

Decline

By the 1930s road transport was taking over, and the

cotton mill A cotton mill is a building that houses spinning or weaving machinery for the production of yarn or cloth from cotton, an important product during the Industrial Revolution in the development of the factory system. Although some were driven b ...

s and collieries were closing. Broadway, the new arterial road (A663), was opened, and the significance of the line was lost. The line to Manchester via Hollinwood, which had been opened on 17 May 1880, and which was much less steeply graded, took most of the traffic: from 1958 only one passenger service (an early morning train from

to Manchester) had been using the line.

Closure

Following the

Beeching Report Beeching is an English surname. Either a derivative of the old English ''bece'', ''bæce'' "stream", hence "dweller by the stream" or of the old English ''bece'' "beech-tree" hence "dweller by the beech tree".''Oxford Dictionary of English Surnames' ...

in 1963, the line was set to close. It did so, to all traffic between Chadderton Junction and Oldham Werneth on 7 January 1963. Oldham Central Station closed later in the 1960s. Soon after, on 13 March 1964, saw the pulling up and scrapping of the rails and other railway goods on the Middleton Junction and Oldham Branch Railway. The Chadderton goods and coal depot remained open at this stage as a short freight only branch from Middleton Junction. Over the years the rest of the line which went to the Chadderton depot was closed and scrapped, and the countryside slowly took over. Over 40 years later the landscape has irreversibly changed back to other uses: apart from an area where the old line entered a

cutting Cutting is the separation or opening of a physical object, into two or more portions, through the application of an acutely directed force. Implements commonly used for wikt:cut, cutting are the knife and saw, or in medicine and science the scal ...

, and where the old ''Johnny Whitehead Bridge'' () could still be used as a crossing point for

rambler Rambler or Ramble may refer to: Places * Rambler, Wyoming * Rambler Channel (藍巴勒海峽), separates Tsing Yi Island and the mainland New Territories in Hong Kong * The Ramble and Lake, Central Park, an area within New York City's Centr ...

s until the recent advent of the construction of the Foxdenton Business Park.

Expansion

Decline

Closure

References

Further reading