This is the story of the railway in a South Pennine valley village which resulted in it developing simultaneously into both a prosperous mill town and a tourist destination in the second half of the nineteenth century. The book focuses on the railway and Hebden Bridge, together with railway connectivity from around the Upper Calder Valley in the very early years. In doing so it also provides an example of how, in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, towns across the country came to get connected to a railway, how and why some railway companies came to be formed, and how the network evolved as a result of fierce competition between competing railway companies. It further demonstrates, through the example of Hebden Bridge, how towns, once connected to the railway, had to fight and lobby to get the facilities necessary for their increasing goods and passenger traffic as they and their industry expanded.