Cutting through the rolling valleys of Brontë country, a trip on the steam-hauled Keighley & Worth Valley Railway is a quintessential Yorkshire experience. Thanks to its vintage wood-panelled carriages and a succession of beautifully preserved stations, it’s no surprise that it’s also become one of Yorkshire’s most iconic filming locations. Remember Jenny Agutter running along the platform to greet her homecoming father in The Railway Children (1970)? That was at Oakworth Station along this line.
Since then, many film and TV dramas have used the railway to bring period scenes to life, from the 1860s to the 1960s. It most recently features in the new adaptation of All Creatures Great and Small, which filmed on the line. In episode 1, James bids farewell to his parents in Glasgow at Keighley Station and disembarks for his new life in the Dales at Oakworth Station. In episode 2, you might spy Oakworth Station again, when James meets Tristan (see clip below). This scene is in episode 2 of All Creatures Great and Small.
Other productions that have filmed on the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway include the new Netflix mini-series The English Game, as well as Peaky Blinders, Testament of Youth, Brideshead Revisited, Swallows and Amazons, The Great Train Robbery and Agatha Christie’s 2018 The ABC Murders. In the 2019 Keira Knightley movie Official Secrets, the railway depicted Cheltenham Spa Station.
