Passenger numbers at Brighouse's new £6m railway station are much lower than expected only a month after its opening.

The heavily subsidised service costing £10,000 a week was expected to handle 1,000 passengers a day.

But research by a local rail watchdog showed the service has been collecting only 15 to 20 people on the 8.10am train which the group calls "the most important train of the day".

The Telegraph & Argus recently reported that transport chief Mick Lyons, chairman of the West Yorkshire Passenger Transport Authority, had sent a strong letter to Northern Spirit about services, branding them a "catalogue of misery" for passengers.

Another West Yorkshire Passenger Transport Authority spokesman said they were unable to say how many people had used Brighouse Station at Birds Royd Lane, off Huddersfield Road, during its first weeks of operation.

At its opening in May, Northern Spirit managing director, Nigel Patterson, declared of the station: "We hope the community will take full advantage of the new hourly service," but poor passenger figures have been blamed on a number of problems in the opening weeks which saw public information systems failing and travellers left stranded when trains were cancelled.

Calderdale Council transport spokesman Coun Geoffrey Wainwright remained optimistic about its future. "The service will improve, but you have to consider that the Calderline buses between Halifax, Brighouse and Huddersfield are much more reliable and frequent now than when the train station was planned," he said.

Northern Spirit spokesman Howard Keal said: "There have been teething problems on the introduction of the service which we have now corrected, and a marketing campaign will start shortly in the local area to attract more people to take advantage of the new link."