A heritage railway which lost hundreds of passengers when pipe line workers damaged a tunnel is battling for compensation.

On one day the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway carried only 15 passengers along the five-mile line between Keighley and Oxenhope.

Passenger numbers for the month of October slumped by about a third to 4,608 after part of the line was closed when brickwork was dislodged at Ingrow tunnel in Keighley. It took 12 days for repairs to be made - a large steel plate was fitted to make the roof safe - and passengers had to catch the bus instead of the train between Keighley and Haworth.

The Yorkshire Water pipeline, which was being fitted by sub-contractors Pipeline Construction, is still not completed and the A629 across the tunnel is reduced to single lane traffic.

Solicitors acting for K&WVR are negotiating with loss adjusters acting for Pipeline Construction in a bid to win compensation for the railway's trading losses.

Railway Society chairman Graham Mitchell said: "The figures are calamitous. The daily passenger figures were as low as 15, 16, 22 and 25 on certain days.

"Never in our 30 years of operating the branch line have we carried as few people as that."

A Yorkshire Water spokesman said experts were looking at ways to carry out the improvements to the water pipe and part of the main road was still dug up.

The tunnel was now safe but contractors could not immediately resume work and YW was considering an alternative proposal of laying a special plastic layer inside the existing pipe.

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