Settle to Carlisle line celebrates 150 years of scenic railway history

Have you heard the one about the railway line that was threatened with closure, so lots of people started using it and it was saved? Welcome to the Settle to Carlisle line, the quirky steel road through some of Britain's most magnificent countryside.

The line starts in Leeds and passes through Shipley and Skipton, but it is the section between North Yorkshire and Cumbria that is world-famous for its views. Heading north from Settle, the peak of Pen-y-Ghent soon looms large, with Whernside and Ingleborough following a few miles later.

Karen Morley-Chesworth from the Settle-Carlisle Railway Development Company said the route was "the best of British countryside". "You can come on the train at Leeds where you bump into people every second, and you get off the train here and there's nobody. There's just scenery."

In the 1980s, there was a proposal to close the line but thousands of people - and one dog - objected. There is now a statue of Ruswarp the border collie, who signed the petition with his paw, and was classed as a paying passenger.

Passenger services started 150 years ago today, and to mark the occasion, tickets are being made available on the Northern-operated route for 150p each. This is a line with added value - it is not uncommon for the train conductor to give a running commentary on the landscape passing by.

Conductor Aaron Hendry said: "It's the luckiest part of my job, getting to be on this line. Last year it was voted the second most scenic line in the world, and I get to work on it. It's brilliant."

It could be argued there's a certain romance about the line too, according to operations manager Susie Smith. "My dad was a driver on the line and we used to come on holiday to Dentdale and stand in a field waving our tea towels, giving him a wave and he'd toot his horn," she said. "I met my husband, who works on the line, so we have our very own love story."

The crown jewel of the route is the legendary Ribblehead Viaduct. Blood, sweat, tears and death built this line. So many men died, many of them "navvies" who moved between major construction projects, they had to make local graveyards bigger. The viaduct consists of 24 arches carrying the track at more than 100ft (30.5m) high. It is an engineering marvel and a Yorkshire landmark.

Pete Myers, chair of the Settle-Carlisle Railway Development Company, has spent his life working on the railways. He said: "Without the viaduct, the line just wouldn't be complete. If we are serious about carbon reduction and green travel, public transport is an instrumental part of that. It is a truly green way of looking at the Dales."

At Ribblehead, you will find a station and a pub; appropriately named the Station Inn. The hostelry has just been bought by Andrew Hields, who said the pub and viaduct were "iconic". "It's a few thousand people a year who come in from the train for sure," he said. "This place wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the railway 150 years ago."

The railway has some stations so far from the towns and villages they purport to serve, you need to bring your walking boots - Dent is four and a half miles from the village itself, but geography dictated where the tracks went.