During the 1860s, two small railway companies were formed to promote suburban railways in Bradford, the Bradford, Eccleshill and Idle Railway and the Idle and Shipley Railway. Their schemes - and the companies themselves - were taken up by the Great Northern Railway, which built a line looping through the villages to the north-east of Bradford: from Laisterdyke, through Eccleshill, Idle and Thackley to Shipley.
The line was open to goods traffic on 4 May 1874, and to passengers on 18 January 1875.[3] Eccleshill railway station opened on 15 April 1875.[4]
Passenger service on the line ceased on 2 February 1931 and the passenger station closed, though goods traffic and excursions continued on the whole line until October 1964 and between Shipley and Idle until 1968.[5][6]
^Peel, David (2013). The unusual and the unexpected on British railways : a chronology of unlikely events, 1948-1968. Stroud: Fonthill Media. p. 25. ISBN978-1-78155-234-6.