TEN years ago this month an historic announcement in the House of Commons lifted the threat of closure on England's most scenic railway, the Settle to Carlisle line. Faced with British Rail's determination to close the line, a remarkable rearguard action was fought by an alliance of locals, railway enthusiasts and environmentalists who were to shatter the authority's contention that the line would always be a huge drain on finances.

Railway observers recognised all the classic tactics long before the official announcement of the intention to close the Settle to Carlisle line was made.

A combination of strange pricing policies, cancelled trains, the neglect of maintenance over a period of years and warnings about how few passengers were using the line were well known as measures adopted by British Rail which usually preceded any official statement.

It was known as "closure by stealth", a phrase the campaigners would use frequently over the next eight years.

The claim that repairs on Ribblehead Viaduct would cost £6 million and an announcement that the 93,000 passenger journeys generated less than £500,000 in revenue were seen as imminent warning that the line would be lost. It all sounded as though a softening up process was being prepared and the public conditioned to accepting that the line was unviable.

But if British Rail expected to close this historic and beautiful line without opposition, they were in for a rude awakening.

There were protests by local users and conservation groups alike. The line, famous for its scenery, had many friends as was recognised at a meeting in Settle Town Hall in 1981 when The Friends of the Settle-Carlisle Line was founded in readiness to campaign for the future of the line.

The official closure notice came in December 1983 following an announcement made earlier that British Rail intended to withdraw services.

On the day British Rail announced its closure plans it seemed like an act of heavenly intervention when the overhead wires on the West Coast main line blew down. The line thus proved its worth as a diversionary route for InterCity trains. This was just one of the many twists in the saga.

A Joint Action Committee was established shortly after this, bringing together the Friends, the Railway Development Society (a national rail pressure group) and Transport 2000. The phoney war was over, the fight was on to save the line from closure.

In November 1983 Ron Cotton was appointed by British Rail as project manager for the Settle-Carlisle Line, charged with master-minding the line's closure. In the meantime his job was to provide maximum revenue.

Ironically the publicity unlocked the line's potential. Crowds flocked for what they thought may well be their last journey on the line. As the publicity grew, the numbers of passengers increased thus undermining British Rail's arguments that Settle to Carlisle could not pay its way.

A record number of objections to the closure of the railway were received from more than 32,000 people and one dog - Ruswarp, a border collie cross who used to travel the line with his owner and co-founder of the Friends, Graham Nuttall.

Ruswarp's objection was allowed to stand and he appeared at the Transport Users Consultative Committee (TUCC) inquiry in Appleby, Skipton and Settle in 1986.

As well as individual objectors, county, district, town and even parish councils along the route all played their part. Friends of the Earth made a point of calling at Appelby station on their cycle ride from Land's End to John O'Groats and the Ramblers Association, led by the comedian Mike Harding, also backed the campaign.

Settle Liberal councillor Beth Graham was involved from the start and championed the line at every opportunity. She was also a member of the Joint Action Committee, a sort of organisation of organisations pledged to defend the line.

She remembers fondly the campaign which took up so much time.

At one point she was taken out to Ribblehead for a picture which was spread across page three of the Independent, which drew amusing comments from fellow Liberal politicians as their page three girl.

Miss Graham recounted how at one meeting a consultant's report was called for but the cost was put at thousands of pounds.

"A deathly hush descended and everyone looked aghast. I had to say something and told them that Settle Town Council had set aside £50 and they could have that," she recalled. "It broke the ice and set the ball rolling and actually it was probably the best £50 Settle has ever spent, not least because when the report came out it cost something like £40 and we got two copies!"

Settle Town Council also played an important role, galvanising local opinion and writing and badgering authorities from county down to parish level urging them to back the campaign.

A host of ministers and celebrities were invited on special trains to experience the spectacular journey for themselves and to promote the fact that it was worth saving as a fine example of Victorian engineering alone.

The DalesRail service was also launched by the Yorkshire Dales National Park to give people a glimmer of hope and a service to use.

Hearings into closure objections by the TUCC opened in Appleby on March 24, 1986. Their report, which found that closure of the line would cause extreme hardship to frequent users and those who lived in remote Pennine areas, gave hope to the protesters that the line could yet have a reprieve.

One light hearted case of hardship came from a Halifax Town football supporter who lived in Appleby. He told the committee that should the line close he would be unable to get to matches, and Halifax Town needed every supporter they could get!

Five trains per day were now running each way. Eight stations, closed since 1970, had been reopened, with the launch of the Dalesman Service.

In May 1987 English Heritage offered £1 million, its largest ever grant, towards the repair of Ribblehead Viaduct. Against all the odds local councils managed to raise £500,000 to give the line a chance of being saved.

In 1988 an English Heritage report showed that British Rail's estimates for the repair of Ribblehead Viaduct were vastly overstated. Passenger journeys had now increased to 450,000 and the revenue to £1.7million.

Even when Paul Channon, the Secretary of Trade for Transport, announced that he was "minded" to give consent to the closure, the campaigners did not lose heart. Indeed, if anything, efforts were redoubled.

On Tuesday April 11 Mr Channon announced to the House of Commons that he had changed his mind due to the increased traffic on the line.

This decision brought 10 years of campaigning - almost as long as it had taken Midland to build the line almost 120 years earlier - to a victorious close. There were scenes of jubilant celebration in Settle, with the church bells ringing and the flags flying throughout the town.

* Next week the Herald will be publishing details of the special celebrations planned in Settle and along the line to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the reprieve.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.