Holbeck Viaduct

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May 2024

  • The Holbeck Viaduct running through the centre of Leeds is an old railway viaduct built by the London & North Western Railway in 1882 during the Industrial Revolution. Spanning 92 arches and a hair over 1 mile, the viaduct runs from Leeds Railway station at it's throat, through Holbeck and ending with a connection to the current Huddersfield Line. 

    It would fall mostly out of use by the 1960's as Leeds City Station modernised. It was sparsely used till the last scheduled train ran across it on 11th October 1987.

    Its final use was an emergency holding line in the event of service disruption until the 1990's when it was finally closed and abandoned and has been left to rot ever since. 

    May 2024 was when I finally decided to take a day to scramble onto the viaduct to photograph it, in possibly some of the worst weather to go out with no cover, hot summer sun. I was able to get up onto the embankment near the end of the line where I could follow the old trackbed up to the viaduct. After a nice walk, I reached the viaduct's entrance, which I was able to access after a bit of a squeeze through a fence. 

    Straight away, the most interesting subject presented itself, the old rusty stretch of track that spans nearly the entire structure. It was interesting to find that so much track had been left intact. All that was left was to hike across the mile long viaduct admiring the city views it gave and photographing anything of interest.

    The two main challenges though was the foliage and drains. With this being during the warmer months, there was grass and trees blanketing the trackbed, which made it hard at times to find a way through.

    The drains were more on the dangerous side. Whilst most were boarded over or had grates covering them, some were still exposed and a few were quite concealed despite their depth and hard to spot if not looking, resulting in me partially falling into one (Don’t worry, I only had a couple scrapes).

    After reaching the throat of Leeds station and grabbing some pics of passing trains and getting a few drone shots, I packed up and went home after several hours in the sun.